


A Really Good Detective Never Gets Married

by oschun



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 05:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8359747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oschun/pseuds/oschun
Summary: Written for Big Bang 2009Title is from Raymond Chandler'A love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.' (Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel)





	

Prologue

The body lies still and quiet, the curve of its shoulder transformed into rosy, dappled marble by the light of dawn that slips through the gaps in the boarded window above it. The tattooed rose on its shoulder blooms pink on pale skin. He can almost smell its sweetness from across the room.

He always loves this moment, this quietness that lingers afterwards, the slow warmth of pleasure and power that saturates him to his core.

It’s not about the choosing. That is done for him. Nor is it about the entrapment, although there is pleasure in that (he’d be a liar if he said otherwise). It’s not about the moment of confession (too simple and inevitable), and it’s certainly not about the act itself (a brutish and filthy necessity).

No, his satisfaction lies in watching the soiled soul leak away as it returns to where it belongs. It’s in that precise moment when breath stops, eyes turn glassy and heat starts to evaporate. That’s where it is. It’s in that quiet, ecstatic moment between him and them.

And in this moment, as he leaves, there’s pleasure in knowing that he has done his duty, that he is making the world a better place and sending a message that no-one else has the courage to send. He will be heard.

The sun is rising and it’s going to be a beautiful day.

 

***  
Dean wakes up to the shriek of his phone, slatted light like thick lasers through the open blinds and a mouth that tastes like a backstreet butchery.

“Fuck,” he groans aloud, trying to un-stick gluey eyelids.

How many times has he woken up, head pounding, with that word in his mouth in recent months? He doesn’t even want to think about it. He waits for the rush of regret and recrimination, for his pragmatic, better self to admonish the dark son-of-a-bitch that seems to have taken up permanent residence inside him, growing daily, pushing aside everything else to fit himself snugly under Dean’s skin.

His better self is slow to wake, though, as the phone continues its high-pitched tirade in his ear. He picks it up with every intention of throwing it across the room, possibly through the glass of the window. Both are points of irritation and sensory pain.

Fortunately, his better self manages to sleepily remind him that it’s a bad idea. He flips open that bane of his life and snarls, “What?”

“You have exactly twenty minutes to get your hung-over ass out of bed. Get up, have a shit, throw up if you have to, shower, shave that ugly mug of yours, make yourself some of that muddy Colombian crap you like and drink it on the way over to the precinct. A uniformed’s coming to pick you up in twenty minutes. Do exactly what I’ve told you in that exact order and you might not get fired today. Dickhead.”

The line goes dead before he can work up an affectionate smirk, never mind some smart-assed reply.

He’s actually grateful for the precision of his partner’s instructions and follows them to the letter, including some retching in the sink as he brushes his teeth. He looks up at himself in the mirror afterwards, considers the ravaged landscape of his face and hears that better voice telling him that he’s an asshole.

“Yeah, I know,” he replies, looking back defiantly.

He wastes precious minutes doing the double-Dean mirror confrontation and has to forego the rich Colombian roast that sits temptingly in the centre of the fridge, lonely and glossy-brown in its expensive packaging next to a shrivelled carrot and the enormous blister of ice that has been threatening to consume the middle shelf for weeks.

The gauge is fucked. He’s been meaning to do something about that but just doesn’t seem to get around to it.

There’s only a slug of orange juice left in the carton in the fridge’s side panel. He tilts it above his head, slurping down the dregs, an orange trickle running down his jaw. He puts it back, forgetting that it’s empty, and licks away the sour residue of juice and toothpaste at the corners of his mouth.

His mouth still tastes like something died at the back of his throat. Did he seriously eat the three day old pizza in the fridge after getting back from the bar last night?

A litter of dried-out crusts provides undeniable evidence in answer to that question.

Fortunately, the rookie cop that picks him up has a steaming Styrofoam cup of something that resembles coffee waiting for him in the patrol car. She looks familiar. He has a feeling that she’s pulled Dean duty before. He tries not to see the flicker of pity in her eyes as he slips into the seat next to her. It irritates him. He’s done a pretty good job of tidying himself up. His suit is mostly clean, his tie’s about to strangle him, his jaw is smooth. What the fuck else does she expect from him?

He punishes her by ignoring her inane chatter across town, sips his coffee and stares out the windshield.

He’s the last one into the briefing room and feels the swivel of eyes to the back as he enters, followed by the quick turnaround and irritatingly polite lack of hooted comments about his lateness. He’s so fucking tired of their understanding attitude. It’s embarrassing from hardened cops. He makes more noise than he should, slamming the door loudly behind him and dragging a chair across the room, the squeal of its unshod metal feet loud against the uncarpeted floor.

Harvelle waits for him to sit down, her mouth thinned into a straight line, legs widening a little as her hands move to rest on her hips. Her overcompensating woman-in-a-position-of-authority stance. He’s all pretend innocence as he settles back into his chair, legs astride to remind her who actually has the balls in the room, eyebrows raised.

“Jesus,” Henriksen hisses next to him.

“No, partner, it’s me.” Dean smirks, trying to ignore the nausea that rises in his throat at the smell in the room: cop-sweat and greasy bacon sandwiches wolfed down in morning traffic. The crime-scene photographs on the board are lurid in the fluorescent light. A new day, a new victim. They all blend into the same broken images that chase themselves across the shut lids of his eyes every night, even after a bottle of Jack.

“Thanks for the call-and-ride,” Dean whispers, audible enough to irritate Harvelle but quiet enough to communicate his genuine gratitude.

“Screw you, Winchester. In no way do you deserve me, in no way at all.”

“I know, baby, you’re too good for me. I’m not worthy,” he whispers back.

“Don’t baby me. I’m putting in a request for a new partner today. You’re an albatross around my neck.”

The words are familiar banter but glossed with that new sound that’s shiny and superficial in some of what his partner says to him lately. He glances sideways, trying to catch Henriksen’s eyes. He remains staring steadfastly ahead. That would never have happened two months ago. Two months and two days, but who’s counting?

Dean tries something else. “Check out Harvelle’s hard-on through her pants suit. Bitch gets a boner from briefing the boys.”

Despite himself, Henriksen snorts aloud as his eyes drop to their captain’s crotch. Harvelle’s irritated glare from the front of the crowded room is only a secondary bonus.

She finishes the briefing, issues her usual instruction to _Be careful out there_ and dismisses them.

As Dean gets up to leave with the others, he hears, “Winchester, a minute of your time?”

He groans under his breath and Henriksen whispers, “She’s going to hand you your ass on a plate.” Dean pulls a face at the unsympathetic tone and sinks back into his chair.

Harvelle shuffles paper into the scuffed leather shoulder bag she always carries around with her as the room clears. Dean puts his feet up on the chair in front him and waits for her to cross the room, stand over him and point out his many failures. He’ll be damned if he’s going over to her.

Instead, she flicks shut the clips of the bag and sits down on a chair on the raised platform at the front of the room, crosses her legs and leans forward, her hair slipping over her shoulders. She looks at him across the scattered chairs for a few silent moments.

“Dean,” she says quietly. It’s not her captain’s voice but the tone is, nevertheless, full of quiet authority. “You need to get your shit together. You’re not safe on the job like this. There’s only so long that everybody’s going to cover for you. Get it together or you’re going to lose your job. And we both know that the job is the only thing you’ve got.”

It’s worse somehow that she’s on the opposite end of the room, that her voice carries quietly across the empty space between them.

His stomach clenches, the familiar nausea rising in his throat. It’s not just from the acidic emptiness left over from last night’s whiskey, nor from the fear of losing the only reason he actually rolls out of bed in the morning, this stranglehold on his gut has been there ever since he stood in the morgue two months ago looking down at his father’s corpse laid out on cold metal like some anonymous victim with a John Doe tag on his toe. It’s there all the time in the background, a tightening band around his stomach threatening to crush him from the inside.

He’s still trying to formulate a response when she hits him with the worst of it, “You’re going to get somebody killed, Dean. Victor needs you to have his back.”

His better self acknowledges what he already knows. He can’t let her know that, though. Sometimes he feels like all he has is his stubbornness. Letting go of it would open the floodgates to all kinds of shit that would drown him in an uncontrollable deluge.

“Henriksen knows that I’ve got his back,” he says, knowing that it’s probably a lie. “We’ve been partners for eight years. I’m his kid’s godfather. I would never put him in danger. And half of those neat little stats that you report to the commissioner are because of mine and Henriksen’s clearance rate.” He’s trying hard to work up some semblance of righteous anger but the juddering rhythm in his chest makes the words come out breathless.

Harvelle gets up, walks across the room, stops in front of him and speaks in the same quiet voice, “I will take away your badge, Dean. It’s not an idle threat. Quit jerking the shrink around in your weekly meeting and actually talk to her. Deal with the shit that’s going on in your head or you’re going to burn out.”

She walks past him, heading towards the door. He hears the hard click of her boots hesitate after the door opens. “You’re not the only one who misses him, Dean.”

He snorts aloud as he finally manages to work up the anger that had escaped him earlier. He doesn’t turn around to face her, allows his voice to bounce back across the empty room to where she stands behind him. “You think you get to say that because you were fucking him for a couple of months before he died? You don’t. Stop playing the grieving widow. That’s not what you are.”

Her voice doesn’t change, doesn’t become angry or irritable or hurt. She just responds in that same flat, quiet tone behind him, “I miss him. I loved him. And you’re a selfish prick to keep punishing me for it."

She’s the only person he knows who could possibly understand how he feels, the only person he could talk to about the gaping black hole his father has left in the wake of his death. She lost a husband to the job years ago. She did love his dad. He knows that.

That’s exactly the reason why he turns his head and says over his shoulder, “A selfish prick? I’ve heard that one before. You sound like my darling ex-wife. Like mother, like daughter.”

There’s a pause and then she asks, “You coming on Sunday?”

It’s like they’re reading from different scripts.

She has a knack for doing that. He’s watched her often enough in the interview room, questioning suspects like she’s listening to their internal thoughts and hasn’t heard a word coming out of their mouths. Poor bastards always get caught up in the round-and-round and eventually tell her what she wants to know. Some of them cry in relief afterwards.

“Why wouldn’t I be? He’s my son, Grandma.”

“You missed his birthday last year.”

She never really sounds like she’s being a bitch. It’s always logical and true. It’s the reason why he respects her, why he understands what his father saw in her. It’s also the reason that he secretly hates her a little.

“I think I was working a case that you’d assigned me, Captain. What do you want me to be, the good son-in-law or the good detective?”

The snick of the door is a hollow victory.

 

***  
“What, no tears?”

“It’ll take more than Harvelle on the rag to make me cry, dude. You know how tough I am.”

Henriksen is sitting at his desk, a file in his hand. Surprisingly, he looks up at Dean, pauses, and asks quietly, “What will it take then, Dean?” His expression is serious.

Is everybody out to get him today?

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes, Vic, save it for group therapy! I’ll be over at the M.E.’s if you feel like being a detective instead of a shrink.”

Dean’s still seething with anger when he gets to the Medical Examiner’s office. He can’t get it under control and has to hit the emergency button of the elevator taking him down to the morgue, take deep, steady breaths and clench his fist over and over to stop himself from punching the hard metal walls boxing him in.

His face is a composed mask when he steps out of the elevator five minutes later. He knows that he’s going to need it to deal with the coroner.

“Detective Winchester, what brings you to the bowels of the building? Wait! Let me guess. You’ve come to the lab to see what's on the slab. I see you’re shivering with antici... pation.”

He can never quite prepare himself enough.

“Ash, don’t make me lock you in a cooler.” His hard voice ends Ash’s Sweet Transvestite routine before he can even get going.

Ash is one of those weirdoes who go to screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show where audience participation is mandatory. He probably wears fishnets under his lab coat. He surfs porn when he’s not poring over dead bodies and crooning to them like they’re in need of comfort.

He’s also damn good at his job, doesn’t miss even the smallest detail and has an uncanny ability to intuit the sad, human story that lies behind the dead body on his table. Normally, Dean’s more tolerant of, even occasionally amused by, his weirdness. But not today. Today, even puppies and small children need to keep out of his way.

Ash looks vaguely hurt. “Jeez. Okay. Okay. Anybody ever tell you that you’re an asshole?”

“You’ll be unsurprised to hear that a number of people have already expressed that opinion today, and it’s not even 8 a.m. What’ve we got?” he asks abruptly, moving to the body lying on the central autopsy station.

He’s surprised by the silence that meets his question and turns around to see Ash looking pissy and obviously waiting for an apology.

Dean sighs, hangs his head and wonders if it isn’t too late to have a sick day. “Ash, I’m having a day from hell and, as I pointed out earlier, it’s not even eight yet. Give me a break, dude. I have a hangover and I’m in the morgue. This chemical smell is making me want to throw up the breakfast I haven’t even had yet.”

Ash is a teetotaling stoner and inevitably has no sympathy with Dean’s hangover. He remains where he is, arms folded and foot tapping.

Dean gives in, “I’m sorry. Okay?” He sounds less than convincing, but it’s enough for Ash.

“She’s probably a pro,” he says as he crosses the room and pats the body briefly on the thigh. “Evidence of previous STDs. There’s scar tissue down below. She’s got track marks on her arms. No purse or I.D. She’s young, though, probably no more than nineteen. There’s a rose tattooed on her left shoulder.” He lifts the body to show Dean.

“She was tortured. There are bruises and razor cuts all over her body. Time of death was somewhere between midnight and 1:00 a.m. She died of exsanguination, bled out from having her throat cut.”

Dean leans forward to get a closer look at the wound. It stretches in a red-raw arc from under one ear across to the other. It’s neat, just the single cut, slicing through skin, severing arteries and part of the larynx.

“There was a lot of trace on her clothing. She’d had a busy night before some sick fuck did this to her. I did the evidence collection for sexual assault. The samples have already gone off for analysis.” He smirks at Dean across the body. “That’s because I’m pretty incredible at my job.”

Dean doesn’t say, Ash, that’s because you live in the morgue and have no life.

Ash pushes the girl’s bleached-blonde hair back from her forehead. “And then there’s this cross carved into her forehead. Done post-mortem. It’s too thick to have been done with a razorblade. Probably some kind of hunting knife with a smooth edge. Four inches maybe, with a 4mm edge. Probably the same weapon used to cut her throat, but don’t hold me to it.” He strokes the girl’s hair back down, pats her on the head and turns away to take off his gloves.

“There’s something else.” He’s got his back turned to Dean as he washes his hands at the sink in the corner.

“What?” Dean asks.

Ash turns around. “There was something in her stomach. A piece of paper with some sort of handwritten message on it. I couldn’t read all of it. Stomach acids made a mess of it, but the first line was _I confess to the sin of_ and the rest of it looked like a list. I recognized the word _harlotry_. Yeah, man, I kid you not,” he responds to Dean’s disbelieving expression. “I’ve sent it to forensics.” He looks across at the body, then back at Dean. “I’ve got a feeling this one’s going to get messy, Winchester.”

“Fuck,” Dean sighs and leans against the steel counter.

“Another thing…”

“There’s more?”

Ash smirks annoyingly. “Girl upstairs says some guy phoned about the time the body came in, asking whether a girl with a rose tattooed on her shoulder had been brought in. Said he was calling from The Observer but the call was traced to some kind of homeless shelter on Atlantic.”

“A homeless shelter? You think the girl was sleeping rough?”

Ash looks over at the body. “I think everything in that girl’s life was rough.” He turns back to Dean, “Investigating her story is your job, right? I’ve done my thing.”

“Right,” Dean says sarcastically, “You only deal with the dead. I remember.” He starts heading towards the door.

“You have a nice day now, Detective Winchester,” Ash calls out cheerily.

Dean mutters under his breath. Ash chuckles behind him and starts humming Rose Tint My World.

Dean gets the address of the shelter from the woman in the front office and calls Henriksen from the car.

“Started to think you were planning on flying solo today, Winchester. I know how much you prefer the lonely pleasure of jerking off to a meaningful relationship.”

Dean grins, glad that Henriksen doesn’t bring up that earlier uncomfortable moment between them. “You know I’m only half a man without you, partner.”

“You better believe it,” Henriksen answers.

Dean tells Henriksen about the call to the M.E.’s office, says that he’s going to check out the shelter and arranges to meet his partner at the site where the body was dumped in an hour.

 

***  
The shelter is housed in a brownstone on a side-street off the noise and busyness of Atlantic Avenue. A small sign next to the door designates it as The Refuge.

Dean rings the bell. The door is answered by an androgynous looking youth with dreadlocked blue hair and a face full of piercings. There’s a passageway behind the kid leading to a kitchen, stairway to the right and a big, airy room to the left that contains a pool table, beaten up couches and an assortment of kids lounging around.

“Yeah?” Low voice. Probably a boy then.

“I’m looking for whoever’s in charge,” Dean says.

“That’d be me,” the kid replies with a smirk. “You can call me Lord Cobalt.”

Dean snorts and says, “Sure, Lord Cobalt. Anybody else here that I can talk to?” He flashes his badge.

The kid recoils from the flash of metal and mumbles, “Sam’s in the back, through the kitchen.” He points vaguely behind him and slinks back into the other room.

Dean walks down the corridor, through the shabby but spotlessly clean kitchen and out into a court-yarded garden at the back. It’s surprisingly big and well-kept. Shrubs and flower borders are evidence of someone’s care and attention. He comes to an abrupt stop when he notices the half dozen people standing in weird, still poses on the sun-washed paved patio. It takes him a moment to realize they’re doing Tai Chi or something.

There’s a slightly older guy, probably in his mid to late twenties, facing a motley crew of teenagers, clearly leading them through the slow movements. Dean guesses this must be Sam. He’s tall, at least 6’4’’, and dressed in a pair of black cotton wraparound trousers, the cord knotted tightly around his waist. He’s barefooted and shirtless. Well-defined muscles move under smooth skin as he gracefully changes position.

The kids move in synch with him. One of them loses his balance and falls over, giggling. The other kids mostly ignore him, their eyes fixed on the older guy.

Dean understands why, he’s sort of fascinating to look at. If Dean used words like beautiful to describe men, he might apply it to this one. But he doesn’t, so he ignores the word flashing at the back of his mind. He can’t, however, deny that traitorous clench low down in his body. It’s been a while since he…He’s not thinking about that right now. He’s got a job to do.

The guy gives the giggling kid on the ground a cool look. It has the desired effect. The kid jumps back up, mumbles, “Sorry, Sam,” schools his face into a Zen-like expression and continues with the routine.

Dean smiles at how easily Sam is able to get the kid to do what he wants him to. Dark eyes flick a glance over at him. He’s surprised by the effect of that single look and understands why the kid became so immediately compliant. He leans against an outside wall and watches the group going through the slow movements, admittedly keeping his eyes mainly on the tall figure at the front. It’s not because he can’t help himself. It’s just that he’s waiting to talk to what appears to be the only adult in the place.

Even though Sam doesn’t look over at Dean again as he takes the kids through the practiced routine, he seems to radiate awareness, like he can feel Dean’s eyes on him. He’s entirely unselfconscious, though, and appears at home in his body, in his skin, in a way that not many people are. The balance and control of his limbs and deep breathing is mesmerising to watch. It’s strangely calming, and Dean feels the tension that’s been in his gut since he woke up this morning start to ease away.

There’s also a voyeuristic pleasure in watching sunlight on tanned skin and the flex of muscle. Dean tightens his hands in his pockets as he imagines moving them over that naked chest.

The session comes to an end and Sam does a little bow that the kids mimic. “That’s it for today,” he says and a grin breaks like daylight across his face. Dean does a bit of a double-take at the transformation from cool inscrutability to smiling happiness.

The kids all start talking and laughing at once, breaking the silence. It’s startling. Dean quickly shifts his weight away from the wall and shakes himself out of what feels like a reverie.

Released from the quiet control of the routine, a skinny, pale-skinned kid of about eighteen suddenly leaps towards Sam with a theatrical yell and starts sparring with him. Sam laughingly blocks his exaggerated karate chops. Another kid jumps on his back, attempting to wrestle him to the ground.

Time to cut short this joviality. Dean clears his throat loudly. Sam looks up through long hair that’s fallen into his face in the tussle. His eyes are dark and intense, and Dean feels them on him like the unexpectedness of a hot wind.

Sam kind of picks up both kids, one in each hand and places them on either side of him. The guy’s impressively strong. He smiles and says something to them Dean doesn’t hear. The kids start wrestling each other, whooping and falling into a flowerbed. Somebody’s going to kick their asses for that.

Sam shakes his head at their antics as he walks over to Dean. “Sorry,” he says, smiling, “They get a little boisterous. You know how it is.” His voice is deep and warm.

“Sure. They’re just kids, right?” Dean smiles back, it’s impossible not to. “The Tai Chi doesn’t exactly calm them down.”

“It’s Qigong,” Sam corrects him. “And you should see what they’re like without it.”

Dean’s never heard of Qigong. “You’re teaching martial arts to juvenile delinquents? Is that wise?”

Sam’s expression changes, his smile fading. “Qigong isn’t exactly a martial art. At least, it’s not about learning to fight. It’s about channelling chi, spiritual energy. And, actually, it does settle them. Also,” his tone hardens, “they’re not juvenile delinquents. They’re just kids struggling to make it on their own.”

Dean feels like an ass and flushes. “Right. Sorry.”

Sam cocks his head as he measures the genuineness of Dean’s response. Dean gives him a contrite grin, the one that’s gotten him out of trouble on more than one occasion. It’s gotten him laid a few times, too.

Sam’s expression clears and he smiles back as he holds out his hand. “I’m Sam.”

Dean forgets that he’s here on a case and reaches out a hand. “Dean,” he says.

The clasp of Sam’s hand is warm and lingers too long. It doesn’t feel like a handshake should. It’s too intimate, too much like really holding another man’s hand.

Dean’s palm burns a little when he drops his arm. He tries not to breathe too hard or drop his eyes to Sam’s bare chest. He’s embarrassed by the twitch of Sam’s lips. Any attempt at disguising his physical reaction to this man is clearly not working. He’s normally better at hiding what he’s thinking.

“Qigong is similar to Tai Chi and Yoga. It’s good for flexibility of the joints and muscles, and for easing…stiffness.” Dean knows that he hasn’t imagined the way Sam slides the word out of his mouth like it’s something hot and hard. Sam then drops his eyes to Dean’s crotch, as if illustrating his point.

Dean’s been half hard since he first saw this man raising his arms in a slow arc above his head like he was drawing the sun into his body. He tries to control the way his hips want to settle into a suggestive pose under the scrutiny of those dark eyes and stifles the grin threatening the corners of his mouth. There’s something slightly outrageous about the obvious flirtation that makes him want to laugh out loud.

Sam doesn’t try to hide his own grin. “I saw you watching me. Is it a discipline you think you’d like to explore?” The sexual suggestion in his voice is simple, straightforward and oddly friendly. There’s no game-playing, no posturing, just this honest and outright acknowledgement of an immediate attraction.

Dean can’t remember the last time he’s had such an honest moment with another person. He can’t help himself. He laughs. It’s a loud and unexpected sound from some place inside him that he’d almost forgotten was there.

Sam’s grin widens. “You look like you need to laugh more often. So, can I help you with something? Why are you here? Other than to check me out–I mean, watch me teach Qigong to kids who’d rather be doing something else.”

For a moment Dean can’t even remember what he’s doing here. Then he has to take another moment to stop himself from voicing some cheesy line about all the ways in which this tall, dark stranger could help him out.

Sam’s lips twitch again like he knows exactly what Dean’s thinking.

Dean manages to pull himself together and says, “Somebody called the M.E.’s office earlier from this address. You have any idea who that somebody might be?”

It’s like watching shutters come crashing down. One minute Sam’s wearing a lazy, sexy grin and the next an unreadable mask settles over his features. Dean doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone with such an expressive, changeable face. It’s kind of disconcerting. He feels a sinking disappointment at the sudden change of atmosphere.

“You a cop?”

“Yeah,” Dean replies, showing his badge and remembering who he is. He hopes Sam doesn’t think that he was leading him on.

“Come inside,” Sam says in a cool, unemotional voice. He walks past Dean up the short flight of steps into the kitchen. Dean follows him, trying not to watch the way the muscles that stretch out from his spine move as he walks.

Sam picks up a t-shirt hanging over a kitchen chair and pulls it over his head as he leads Dean down the passageway and into the open room at the front of the building.

The kids in the room turn to look at them curiously as they walk in.

A girl with masses of brown, matted curls and a bruise purpling her left cheekbone throws her pool cue on to the table and comes bouncing over. “Sam, my man,” she says happily, “I’ve taken Jazz two games running.”

Sam’s expression softens a little as he meets her high five.

“I’m ready for our re-match. Prepare to be defeated!”

“I’ll be out in a minute, Julia. I have to deal with something first.” He indicates Dean.

The girl barely spares Dean a glance, her eyes full of Sam. “Okay. But hurry. I’m on a winning streak and I don’t want to lose it.” Her tone is petulant.

Dean follows Sam into a small office on the other side of the room. Filing cabinets take up half the right wall, shelves filled with labelled files stretch the rest of it. Potted plants line the windowsill. A large gay pride flag takes up most of the back wall.

Dean gives the rainbow colors a cynical look, drops his eyes to see Sam--who’s taken a seat behind the large desk--looking up at him.

“We’re LGBT friendly,” Sam says quietly.

Dean snorts, that tight knot of nausea is back in his stomach. “Yeah, Cyndi Lauper has been raising awareness, right?” He doesn’t hide the sneer in his voice.

“Most of the kids here have been failed by every adult they’ve ever known. A lot of them come from broken families and have been through the foster care system. They turn eighteen and suddenly have to fend for themselves in what can be a hostile world. It’s hard being young and homeless. It’s harder being young, gay and homeless. They have to deal with prejudice thrown at them when they’re most vulnerable. The system doesn’t often make allowances for gay people. You should know that, right?”

Dean ignores the lecture and the pointed remark, gets down to the reason why he’s here. He’s allowed himself to be distracted long enough. Must be the hangover. “So, you know who called the M.E.’s office earlier this morning?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I kn—thought that somebody might have been taken there.”

“Who?”

“A girl called Rose.”

“How did you know she was dead?”

“I didn’t. I just thought she might be in trouble.”

“You didn’t know she was dead? And yet you phoned the morgue? Kind of a weird thing to do. Why not phone the hospitals?

“I did call the hospitals.”

“Why didn’t you call the precinct first? I don’t know, file a missing person’s report or something? And why did you pretend to be calling from a paper?”

“Because I know how suspicious you people are. I just wanted to know if she’d been taken in. I had a bad feeling. Her--” he hesitates, “her lifestyle placed her in danger.”

“How do you know her?”

“She used to come here sometimes. The girl outside, Julia, is Rose’s sister.”

Dean feels a pang of regret at the image of the dead body in the morgue being related to that damaged, curly-haired girl playing pool in the room next door.

“So she’s dead?”

“There’s a girl in the morgue with a tattoo on her left shoulder of a pink rose and the word Rose underneath it.”

Sam draws a deep breath and shifts some papers around in front of him.

Dean guesses his description of the girl’s tattoo is familiar. “Somebody needs to come in and identify the body.”

Sam looks up quickly. “I’ll do it.”

Dean nods at him. “I need to ask where you were last night.”

Sam’s lips twist cynically. A new expression. “I was here. I do a sleep-in once a week. I’m a volunteer for the charity that runs this place.

The guy’s a saint. “Can anybody vouch for that?” It’s his job to ask the questions.

Sam’s expression darkens, but his voice is cool and neutral when he replies. “Jake, one of the other kids, couldn’t sleep. He has nightmares. We were playing poker until two in the morning. He won $20 off me.”

“Does the premises have a gambling license?” As a joke, it falls pretty flat. Sam looks back at him steadily.

Dean reverts back to questions. They’re safer. “When can you come in?”

“I need to wait for my replacement. Amanda can’t be left on her own. She’s upstairs,” he explains. “There are always two of us on duty.”

“Do you have a number where I can contact you?” Dean feels oddly embarrassed by the question, like he’s actually asking for Sam’s number rather than just doing his job.

Sam gives him a card for a bookstore in the village. “My day job,” he explains.

Dean looks at the card. It reads: Campbell’s: Specialist in rare books and first editions. The card is thick and heavy in his hand. He nods and says, “I’ll be in touch.”

Sam’s eyes burn into his back as he leaves.

He tries not to glance at the girl over at the pool table when she looks up expectantly as he walks out of the office. He imagines that he can see the similarities between her features and another cold, dead face with a second yawning mouth splitting open her throat.

He’s so fucking tired of this life.

It gets worse when he phones Henriksen.

“Looks like tattooed girl wasn’t the first. I’ve pulled two similar reports of dead working girls with crosses cut into their foreheads dumped in similar locations, abandoned buildings or work sites, over the last six months.” Dean’s heart sinks. That’s all they need, some asshole who thinks he’s a modern-day Jack the Ripper doing the world a favor by clearing the streets of hookers.

Henriksen’s voice is taut with tension over the phone. “Where the fuck are you? I tried calling you earlier.”

Dean remembers switching his phone off as he watched Sam turn some obscure Eastern discipline into foreplay. “Sorry,” he mumbles, “I was following the lead on the shelter. Somebody’s coming in later to identify the body.”

 

***  
Dean spends most of the rest of the day at his desk, poring over reports and making calls until his ear burns red from the press of plastic. He gets a call later on to say that someone called Sam Campbell had come in and positively identified the body as Rose O’Connell. Fingerprints confirm the victim’s identity.

He tries not to think about the man behind the name as he pulls the information on the girl. The reports on Rose and Julia O’Connell tell a story he’s heard many times over. A drunken, abusive father; mother dead from cancer; juvenile records for both of them: Julia for shoplifting and Rose for drugs and soliciting.

Henriksen remains pissed at him for turning his phone off and failing to meet him at the site where the girl’s body was dumped. Until lunchtime. Dean comes back from an interview with two of Henriksen’s favorite sandwiches from a place down the street: roast beef with horseradish on rye and Cajun chicken on white.

Henriksen’s lips twitch at the peace offering smacked onto his desk. He presses his hand over his phone’s mouthpiece, preventing whoever’s on the line from hearing his whispered, “You’re a dickhead, Winchester.”

Dean grins, knowing that he’s won him over.

It’s a long, slow day. By late afternoon the clear skies of morning turn to thick, brooding clouds the color of mercury. Everybody seems on edge, the heavy grey humidity getting under people’s skins and making them snappy and irritable.

Dean gets into an altercation at the water cooler and almost punches fat Kowalski in the mouth. He’s been meaning to smack the smirk off the son-of-a-bitch’s face for a while now. A pointed comment about his inability to make it into work on time makes Dean see red.

He has to be pulled back by two passing officers.

He feels a small kernel of guilt when Henriksen aims a frustrated glare at him after he’s been shoved back into their partitioned workspace with the instruction to Cool off - even though he knows that Kowalski totally deserved to have his face rearranged by Dean’s fist.

Dean is still carrying the hate from Kowalski’s insinuations about the night his father died, about how John Winchester and his partner had been gunned down because of Dean and Henriksen’s incompetence. It’s not like Dean hasn’t replayed that night over and over and over in his mind, shaving off the minutes it took for him and Henriksen to get to the right address, but he doesn’t need a useless slob like Kowalski to rub his face in it.

After the big raid on the warehouse two weeks later when Dean had shot and killed Azazel--the crime lord that John Winchester had spent most of his career trying to bring down--Kowalski had gone around mouthing off about how the department was now turning a blind eye to revenge killings and vigilantism. Dean had been cleared of any misconduct and the shooting had been written up as self-defence. That didn’t shut Kowalski up, though.

The guy had a well-deserved ass-kicking coming his way.

“Jesus, Dean! Kowalski? The guy’s just waiting out his final year before retiring. What the fuck’s the matter with you, man? I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

“Have you heard the shit he’s been saying about me, about both of us? Then the son-of–a-bitch starts on me at the water cooler. What was I supposed to do?”

“Uh, ignore him? Like everybody else does? Nobody listens to his poisonous bullshit. It’s beneath you, man, completely beneath you.”

The disconnect between him and other people has been there for a while, but this growing empty space between him and Henriksen bothers him in a way that the faded white noise of other relationships fails to.

He fakes regret. But it’s all pretense. He can remember how he’s meant to react. He just can’t remember how he’s meant to feel. Mostly, he just wants to plant his fist into somebody’s face.

 

***  
They go to O’Malley’s after work. Dean hasn’t been to the bar for a while. He’s surprised when Henriksen talks him into it after their shift; it’s normally him, not Henriksen, who wants to go for a beer after work. Dean tries to convince him to go somewhere else but his partner is insistent. Dean has a sneaking suspicion that Henriksen has some other motive for insisting on O’Malley’s, probably something to do with facing the demons of memory, or some such psychobabble.

The familiar dark interior, extensive selection of Irish whiskey and The Pogues playing in the background never fail to remind Dean of his father.

He allows himself to look at the framed photograph behind the bar. The wall of the glorious dead. So many cops killed in the line of duty. His father looks back at him, dark features focused and intent. He deserves to be commemorated in this way. John Winchester was a good--make that great--detective.

He didn’t rise to the rank he should’ve, mostly because the ambition ladder held no appeal for him and because he was a stubborn, difficult bastard who constantly rubbed his superiors the wrong way. His record was blotched with official reprimands but amongst his law-enforcement brothers his relentless bloodhound pursuit of his man was legendary.

While he was still breathing, his father cast a shadow that followed Dean everywhere.

Now that he’s gone, the pressure of living up to the Winchester name has become a claustrophobic straitjacket that’s impossible to shake off.

He’s standing there, torn between hating the bastard that affected just about every choice he’s ever made in his life and longing for a warm, supportive arm around his shoulder, when Joe behind the bar says, “Haven’t seen you for a while, Winchester. Heard you got the bastard that murdered your old man. There’s some justice in that.” He slides his ever-present drink out from under the counter and toasts Dean and the photograph on the wall.

Dean briefly inclines his head at Joe, taking in the nodding heads and raised glasses from the cops sitting at the bar in his peripheral vision. This is why he’s avoided O’ Malley’s. He wants to accept the accolade but the empty victory of a dead body lying on a warehouse floor doesn’t allow him the moment. He’s a fraud.

“You okay?” Henriksen asks him gently when he returns to the table with four doubles of ten year old single malt.

He voices the whole thing in one go. “Sure, Vic, I’m just fine and fucking dandy. You know the details of my sad, sad story, right? My father’s dead. I shot his killer in the head, supposedly in self-defence, even though everybody knows that’s not quite how it went down. I have to live with everybody covering my ass. You don’t look me in the eye anymore. Some sick bastard is killing girls on the street. My ex-wife hates me. Her mother is my boss and kicks my ass on a daily basis. My son is some kind of beautiful, alien creature that terrifies me. Did I mention the plumbing in my building?”

Dean downs one of the whiskeys, then another. “Are you going to tell me that I’m a self-pitying asshole?” He slams the second glass down on the table angrily. Faces turn around at the noise.

Henriksen leans back in his chair, unruffled by Dean’s outburst. “No, Dean, I’m going to tell you that Officer Rodriguez has been checking you out since we walked in. She wants to suck your dick and take care of you. That’s how most people respond to you. It’s only you who doesn’t allow them to. Man, you’ve been shooting yourself in the foot for a long time before your dad was killed.”

He gives Dean a sharp look, gets up and tips one of the shots down his throat. “I’m going home to my family. I suggest that you go home with Rodriguez. Let her love you. Make her breakfast in the morning.”

Henriksen doesn’t look back at him as he leaves.

Dean doesn’t look over at Rodriguez’ inviting curves when he walks out almost immediately afterwards.

Dean almost bumps into Henriksen outside the bar’s entrance. For some reason, he’s just standing there looking down the street intently, his eyes scanning the parked vehicles at the curb.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Henriksen’s voice is thoughtful when he turns to look at Dean over his shoulder. “I thought I saw an SUV I recognized from earlier today. I had the weirdest feeling that I was being tailed from the scene where tattooed girl’s body was found. Driver’s a guy in a baseball cap. He turned off before I got back to the precinct, so thought it must’ve been my imagination. Anyway, thought I just saw the same guy in the same SUV pulling out a minute ago.” He turns back to watch the taillights of another car disappear down the street.

Dean has learned to trust Henriksen’s instincts, regardless of how flimsy they might sound, so he doesn’t point out the number of SUV drivers wearing baseball caps that he sees every day in the city. Instead, he asks, “You get the plate numbers?”

“No. I didn’t get a good enough look at it. Anyway,” Henriksen shakes his head, “I’m probably imagining things or I’m becoming paranoid from hanging out with you for too long. I’m starting to think everybody’s out to get me. Of course, in your case, that’s probably true. Everybody is out to get you.”

“I thought everybody wanted to suck my dick and take care of me. Now you’re telling me everybody wants to get me?”

“The protective, dick-sucking response is only an initial reaction. Doesn’t take long for a person to realize that the only protection you need is from yourself, Winchester. The people who love you mostly just get to the point where they want to punch your pretty face. I thought you were going to make Rodriguez an offer she couldn’t refuse?”

Irritation starts a low simmer under Dean’s skin. “Your idea, not mine, partner.” Looking for trouble, he says, “If you think Rodriguez is so hot, why don’t you go back in there and offer her some Henriksen lovin’?”

Henriksen doesn’t rise to the bait and quietly responds, “You know I’m not that man anymore, Dean.”

Since his daughter was born two years ago, Henriksen has become increasingly domesticated. Dean can barely remember the wild man his partner used to be when they were assigned their first case together. Back then, they used to go to bars and make bets on who’d get laid first. Mostly it was just women. Picking up guys was something Dean kept for hard-drinking nights out on his own. After his divorce, about the same time as Henriksen’s kid was born, things seemed to spiral out of control - the late nights, the drinking and the men. It was like Dean Winchester and Victor Henriksen just started to head in different directions.

“I’ll call you in the morning, Mr Dad.” The sarcasm in his voice is countered by the fond squeeze he gives his partner’s shoulder as he turns to leave.

“Dean.”

“Yeah?”

“Watch out for undercover vice.”

There’s a barb in there somewhere, but mostly it sounds like the particular brand of exasperated affection Henriksen saves just for him.

Henriksen’s always been this good at reading him. After the day that he’s had, he deserves a real night out. He’s tired of hanging out at the bar down the street from his apartment. He’s not even thirty yet and already he’s starting to feel like one of those old barflies who are ubiquitous at the local watering hole on weeknights.

“I can smell those fuckers from a mile off. I’m a big boy now, partner. I don’t always need you to take care of me.”

Henriksen snorts like he doesn’t believe that for a minute. Dean waves at him over his shoulder and heads down the street.

 

***  
The club is hot with smoke and sweat. Dean walks to the bar, assessing the line-up as he goes. Some of the faces are vaguely familiar. He might recognize them better if the bodies were naked.

It’s been a while since he was on the scene. He hasn’t been to a place like this since his dad was killed.

He scores some blow in the bathroom. It’s been a while for that, too. Bourbon is his current drug of choice. He hasn’t missed this feeling of restlessness, the way that his ribcage feels like it’s squeezing and releasing his heart and lungs too quickly. Not for the first time, he promises himself never to do coke again.

It doesn’t take long for him to catch the eye of a copper-skinned Adonis in a white t-shirt he probably bought in the kid’s section. The rules of engagement are easy in a place like this. Everybody’s here for the same reason. Dean has avoided locking gazes with anyone else, his eyes scanning the crowd and ignoring the open invitation on a number of faces.

Dean’s never had a problem getting laid. It’s breakfast and conversation the next morning that he struggles with. Henriksen’s probably right about most people wanting to suck his dick up to the point when they get to know what he’s really all about. Almost everyone he’s ever cared about has eventually tried--or at least threatened--to beat the crap out of him, Henriksen included.

He continues moving his eyes over the buffet of tanned, half-naked male flesh, and then glances back at Latino guy leaning up against the back wall. The guy smirks like he knew Dean would come back to him.

Dean settles against the bar, lazy half-grin in place. He never makes the first move, always lets them come to him. Latino guy smirks again and takes a long swallow of his drink. He waits Dean out for a few minutes before sauntering over. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asks, sexy, south-of-the-border accent probably a little exaggerated because somebody’s told him it’s hot.

“No,” Dean replies, dropping his eyes to the guy’s toned chest. Youth and a lot of hours in the gym make his body pretty much perfect.

“Want something else?” comes the predictable question.

“Yeah,” Dean growls.

The guy grins and starts making his way towards the back of the club, glancing over his shoulder. Dean downs his drink and follows.

There’s a back room masquerading as a store-room but its real purpose is pretty obvious from the groans coming out of darkened corners.

Latino guy leads him into an unoccupied alcove. Dean leans back against the cold, roughly-bricked wall and watches the guy as he moves forward like he’s going to try and kiss him. Dean quickly twists his head away and the guy ends up with his mouth pressed into Dean’s neck. He starts sucking at the pulse in Dean’s throat and presses a hand to his crotch, rubbing and squeezing Dean into hardness.

Dean’s groan mingles with others in the room. He cups the guy’s ass and pushes a knee between his legs, rocking him up against the muscle of his thigh. Latino guy gasps and breathes heavily into his neck. He fumbles at Dean’s zipper and then moves off his leg so that he can get at him properly. He unzips Dean’s pants, pushes them off his hips, drops to his knees and presses Dean up against the wall.

The hardened cement between the bricks rubs against Dean’s ass, a rough counterpoint to the soft, hot suction on his dick. Dean closes his eyes and pushes forward into the guy’s throat.

An image of dark hair, high cheek bones, knowing eyes and big, strong hands moving in strange gestures in the sunlight appears behind the curtain of his closed eyelids. Sam Campbell. It doesn’t take long. He comes, thinking about the excuse he’s going to make to see Sam again tomorrow. He’s vaguely aware of somebody near him in the dark coming at the same time as he does.

Dean zips up his fly. Latino dude gets up and tries to kiss him again. Dean quickly lifts his forearm, slots it under the guy’s jaw and flips him around. He holds him fast against the wall, arm pressed against the vulnerable give of his throat. Fear flashes through the guy’s eyes at the hard pressure constricting his breathing.

When Dean just holds him there, not pushing any harder and just looking into his eyes, he lets out this strangled little moan as his hips thrust forward. Dean gets the guy’s cock out and jerks him off, pressing harder against his throat when he feels him starting to come. The dim lighting doesn’t hide the flush of blood that fills his face as his mouth opens and closes in a desperate attempt to breathe through his orgasm.

Dean leaves him there with his wet cock hanging out of his jeans, sagging against the wall and trying to catch his breath.

The cold night air is like a slap in the face. A sour taste rises in Dean’s throat and that irritating voice in his head starts its usual litany of questions and answers. Why do you do this to yourself? You’re a self-destructive prick. Why does everything you touch turn to shit? You’re a self-destructive prick.

He can’t hear it anymore when he drinks most of the fifth of whiskey he has at home. The game is a television blur of noise and color in the background.

He punches the mirror in the bathroom just because it’s pissing him off before staggering to bed.

 

***  
Dean wakes up with a dull ache in his head, a throbbing fist and strange tightness in his chest. He lies in bed staring up at the ceiling until he starts to feel panicky, like the walls are closing in on him. He escapes the apartment’s confines, goes for a five mile run around the park, has a cold shower and starts to feel more like a human being.

Over breakfast--with the paper open, but unread, in front of him--he works out how the conversation is going to go with Sam. He runs through various imaginary scenarios and consistently arrives at the same unsatisfactory conclusion.

It’s not going to go well.

But it’s not like that’s going to stop him.

He makes it to the bookstore only just in time. The sign outside tells him that Campbell’s closes at twelve on a Saturday and it’s a quarter to. He takes the short flight of steps down to the basement-level door, pushes it open and steps into the smell of old books.

Colored light shimmers through the bookstore from a stained-glass window at street level. The two floors are connected by a pair of wrought-iron circular staircases at either end of the room. The upper floor half encircles the lower level in a strutted balcony, leaving the central area open all the way up to the rafters. The walls are lined with bookshelves filled with faded leather-bound tomes.

It’s like stepping into another, older world and a stark contrast to the Saturday shopping mania outside.

He’s already feeling out of place in this rarefied atmosphere and his discomfort is not helped by the sight of Sam perched on the edge of a large mahogany desk at the back of the room laughing with a bearded intellectual type wearing a man-scarf knotted around his neck despite the heat outside.

Dean reconsiders his decision to come here, until Sam glances across at him. The initial flare of heat in Sam’s eyes as he recognizes him makes leaving impossible.

Dean turns to look at the titles on the nearest bookshelf. He removes a commentary on William Blake’s visions from the Prophetic sub-section of Literature and Religion, half-heartedly pretending to look at the illustrations when he hears, “Looking for a book, Detective Winchester?”

He turns around. “Not really,” he replies, putting the book back in its place. “I was looking for you, actually.”

“You’ve found me.” For a moment Dean thinks that they’re going to slip back into the flirtation of their initial meeting. Sam’s looking him over with an expression that uncoils slow, lazy warmth in the center of his body.

Sam looks taller, leaner, more sophisticated in a trendily-cut black suit and white shirt open at the neck, showing the tanned column of his throat. “What can I do for you, Detective? Are you here to question me some more?” There’s a sharper edge to his voice now.

Dean responds to it. “If you’re not too busy. Any information you might have on Rose O’Connell could help us catch her killer that much quicker.”

A strange, angry expression tightens across Sam’s face. He looks like he’s going to say something but then cuts himself off, his jaw clenching. He’s hiding something. Dean can’t quite figure out what it is. It’s not like he suspects the guy of being involved in Rose’s murder. Anyway, his alibi checked out. It’s something else.

Dean’s good at reading people. Sam clearly is who he appears to be: urbane bookshop dude with altruistic tendencies and more sex-appeal than any one man has the right to lay claim to. But there’s something else there, too, something unsettling just beneath the surface. The bloodhound instinct stamped into his genes is telling him that Sam knows more about what happened to Rose than he’s letting on. He certainly knew that the girl was dead when he called the morgue.

He concedes to that internal voice that says part of the reason he’s here actually has nothing to do with the case.

But that’s of secondary importance. He’s always a cop first.

Before either can break the silence that’s fallen between them, a phone rings from the desk behind Sam. “Excuse me,” he says in a tight voice and moves away to pick it up.

Dean follows him, not even trying to hide that he’s listening to the conversation.

Sam looks back at him stonily, then looks away with a bemused expression as he listens to the voice on the phone. He opens his mouth a couple of times like he’s trying to cut in. Eventually, he starts grinning into the phone and manages to say, “I thought Tiger was a boy. How is he having kittens?”

Dean’s lips quirk at the unexpected remark. Sam looks back at him and smiles just a little.

“So you can’t make it because you have to play midwife?” Sam takes a seat behind the desk. His expression is amused and affectionate. It suits his face a lot better than the cool wariness Dean seems to evoke.

“Is there someone else I can take? At the last minute like this? I don’t--” He glances quickly up at Dean, draws out a long, speculative mmm and then says, “Maybe there is.”

There’s a pause as he listens to the other person.

“Is he good-looking?” He runs his eyes up and down Dean’s body, lingers on his face, “I guess. If you’re into the macho, overcompensating type.”

Dean tries not to shift on his feet under Sam’s steady scrutiny. He doesn’t really overcompensate, does he?

“My godmother wants to know if you’re a basketball fan.”

Dean raises his eyebrows in surprise. He isn’t, but it’s not like he doesn’t know what the socially correct response probably is. “Sure. Best game there is.” He’s pretty sure that’d actually be football, maybe baseball.

Sam smiles, clearly aware that Dean’s lying. “He says it’s the best game there is.” His grin widens at the response on the other end, then changes into a mildly impatient eye-roll, “I’m not asking him that. It’s not--He’s not--” But his refusal clearly isn’t being tolerated. He sighs and asks Dean, “She wants to know if you like cats.”

Dean smirks at how boyish Sam has become in conversation with his godmother. “Sure,” he replies. “Man’s best friend, right?”

Sam rolls his eyes again and repeats Dean’s remark into the phone. It clearly meets with Sam’s godmother’s approval. “No, Ginnie, he can’t come to dinner,” Sam says quickly and draws the conversation to a close. “I’m going now, okay. I’ll call you later to find out how Tiger’s doing. Yeah, you too.”

Sam puts down the phone, runs a hand through his hair and sighs, “She drives me nuts. She is nuts.” The love in his voice is obvious. He gets up, takes a wallet and keys out of the desk drawer and says, “The Knicks are playing Toronto at one. If you want to know more about Rose, you’ll have to come with me.”

“You watch sports? I would’ve figured you more for the afternoon-jazz-concert-in-the-park type.”

Sam snorts. “I’m gay, not neutered. So, are you coming?” He raises his eyebrows, a challenge in his voice.

“Sure,” Dean replies, “I’m all about the masculinity of sports. Ask anyone”

“Overcompensating,” Sam throws over his shoulder as he turns towards the door.

Of course, they end up not being able to talk about Rose during the game. It’s too noisy and Sam’s too wrapped up in the action on court. He jumps to his feet regularly, hands flung upwards in victory or in despair or in frustration at the referee who is clearly blind and/or biased. Dean doesn’t follow basketball, but it’s hard not to be caught up in his enthusiasm.

So Dean has no choice but to invite Sam out for a drink afterwards. He still needs to figure out where Sam fits into the puzzle pieces of this case. He’s distracted though, his brain scrambled by the heat and conflicting signals crowding around Sam like his own personal weather system. He wonders what it would’ve been like to meet Sam without Rose O’Connell’s death hanging over them. But he guesses that would never have happened; it’s not like he and Sam move in the same social circles.

They go to a sports bar that’s a little too loud for real conversation but manage to find a booth on the other end of the room away from the crowd at the bar and huge television screens.

They’re sitting with beers in front of them and Dean keeps meaning to bring the conversation around to Rose and the case, but he’s enjoying listening to Sam dissecting the game and telling him about the first time his dad took him to a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. Dean understands the magical importance of those memories – he has a few of them himself, locked up tight and precious at the back of his mind. His dad was always busy, always wrapped up in the job, but they’d gone to a few Giants games when Dean had been a kid.

“So now you go to games with your godmother?” he asks.

“It’s sort of this family thing. I used to go with my dad until he died. I lost my mom when I was a baby. It’s only been Ginnie and me for a long time now.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Dean says, surprised by Sam’s openness.

“That’s okay.” Sam is looking back at him with brown eyes that are clear of any darker emotion. “It was a long time ago. I’ve dealt. And Ginnie’s great, completely nuts, but great. She’s kind of fanatical about the Knicks. Only her cats come before basketball.”

The guy is so emotionally healthy and well-balanced that Dean sort of feels like punching him--but that would be an insult to the aesthetics of human biology that allows for faces like Sam’s--so Dean tamps down the bitterness in his gut and gives him a little, twisted smile.

Sam looks at him sharply, eyebrows pulling together like he’s thinking about asking something that can only be unwelcome and intrusive. Dean looks away and finishes his beer, aware of Sam’s eyes on him. He gets up quickly before the conversation starts heading into areas he doesn’t want to go. “Another beer?” he asks. Sam nods, still wearing a speculative expression.

The bar is three deep in Saturday sports fans and Dean thinks, not for the first time, that he ought to be allowed to flash his badge and get to the head of the crowd. The one time he’d tried that, though, drunk and belligerent in a biker bar, it hadn’t gone down too well.

“Mindless, like ants scurrying around spilled honey, aren’t they?”

Dean turns his head. The strange remark has come from a guy standing next to him. He’s watching the commotion around the bar with narrowed eyes. He’s about 5’8’’, white-blond hair under a black baseball cap, sharp cheekbones and blue eyes so pale they look oddly translucent from this angle. The guy turns to face him and Dean instinctively steps back from the intense light of mania in his eyes. He’s clearly nuts or high on something. Dean waits for the sales-pitch for a substance that leads to the nirvana of burnt-out synapses.

“Do you think this is what God intended for his greatest creation?”

Not the crazy of drugs, just the crazy of religion. “Guess not,” Dean replies with humor. “Saturday’s the devil’s day, though. You could try again tomorrow.”

The guy nods, like Dean just said something profound. “Yes. Hypocrisy. Man’s greatest sin. Hypocrisy and apathy. That’s why He has abandoned us. Justice no longer exists because men of conscience stand by and allow evil to spread like cancer all around them. Is the righteous man justified in taking the law into his own hands when the law protects evil-doers?” He cocks his head and stares intently into Dean’s eyes, like he knows him or he’s asking him some kind of coded question, the meaning hidden behind the words.

Dean frowns, really looking at him for the first time and starts running through his internal album of mug-shots. There’s something wrong about this guy, something too purposeful.

“Do I know you?” Dean asks, just as some dude built like a linebacker bumps into him, spilling beer onto his shoes. The religious nut’s reply is lost in the linebacker’s What the fuck asshole! But in the way that the brain sometimes catches up with something it hasn’t had time to fully process, Dean thinks he registers a whispered Not yet, Detective Winchester.

Dean can’t turn to demand what the guy said because the linebacker has him by the arm and is laying into him about spilling his beer. “I just bought this beer, you asshole!” he sputters drunkenly.

Dean manages to shake the linebacker off, but when he turns around the other guy has already disappeared into the crowd. He thinks that he can see a black cap near the exit and, without really knowing why, starts to head in that direction when the drunken linebacker grabs his arm again. Dean twists out of his grip and snarls into his face, “I’m a cop, dickweed. Do you want to get arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct?” The guy raises his free hand in a gesture of compliance, spilling more of the beer in his other hand as he steps backwards.

There’s no sign of the strange, pale-eyed man in the bar or outside the entrance.

Dean is feeling strangely unsettled by the incident. Maybe he just imagined his whispered name.

Either way, the guy’s gone.

He manages to finally get some drinks by elbowing his way to the front of the crowd at the bar. When he gets back to the table, Sam raises his eyebrows and says, “I was about to think you’d bailed on me.”

“Has anybody ever bailed on you?” Dean asks.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Yeah, I would be. You’re way too hot for anybody to ever run out on you.” Dean likes the way Sam looks a little ruffled by that, warmth rising up his throat. Dean grins into his beer. But he can’t quite shake a prickling feeling at the back of his neck and looks over his shoulder to scan the crowd.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks him.

Dean shakes his head. “Nothing. Some weirdo at the bar. It’s nothing,” he says, making up his mind. “My partner says I’m paranoid and he knows me better than anyone.” He throws back his whiskey, followed by a swallow of beer.

Sam shakes his head when Dean pushes the other shot of whiskey across the table at him. Dean shrugs and swallows that one too.

When he places the empty glass on the table, Sam looks down at it, lifts his eyes and asks, “Do you always drink this much?” His voice drops lower, “Or is it because I make you nervous?”

Here we go, Dean thinks. He looks back at Sam steadily. “No. And yes.”

Sam raises his eyebrows questioningly and leans forward, elbows on the table, further into Dean’s personal space.

“No, I normally drink more. And, yes, you make me nervous.” He leans back from his own honesty and the sudden heat that reaches across the table.

Dean’s hands are wrapped around his beer bottle. Sam stretches across the table and rubs his thumb along the blue-vein flutter in Dean’s wrist. “If you’re nervous about asking me home with you, there’s no need. If you’re going to ask, the answer’s yes.”

Dean’s not sure what to do with that. But it’s not like he didn’t know it was coming. From the moment that he’d locked glances with Sam across the courtyard at the shelter, this had become inevitable, a series of events set in motion and leading finally towards Sam in his bed.

He thinks about pulling his arm back. He doesn’t like being touched in public. But that doesn’t fit with his next thought, which is to stretch his arm across the table, wrap his hand around the back of Sam’s neck and pull him into a hard kiss that will wipe that knowing expression from his face, leave him open and raw and all his secrets exposed.

“Do you know who murdered Rose O’Connell?” He asks it quickly, hoping to catch Sam unaware.

“No.” There’s no hesitation, no deceit in that single word.

“Did you know she was dead when you called the morgue?”

“Yes.”

“How could you have known that?”

“I had a feeling--”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. What the hell does that mean?”

Sam bites his bottom lip, but his gaze remains steady and open. “You have instincts, right? That feeling in your gut. You don’t know where it comes from but you know that it’s true. Right?”

“You’ve been watching too many cop shows.” He remembers who he’s talking to. “Or reading too many Raymond Chandler novels. Whatever.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Dean.”

Dean likes the sound of his name on Sam’s tongue. “I want you to tell me the truth, Sam.”

“I am telling you the truth. Rose was working the streets. You know that, right? She was supposed to come and see Julia on Thursday night. She didn’t turn up. Julia was worried. I had this overwhelming sense that something had happened to her. I phoned the hospitals and then I phoned the morgue. And I don’t believe you when you say that you don’t believe me about gut instinct.”

Of course Dean believes in gut instinct. “Okay,” he says. “I live a few blocks away. Do you want to come home with me?” He waits to see if the Winchester interrogation technique has made Sam back off.

It hasn’t.

“Yes, Detective Winchester, I want to come home with you.”

Dean’s suddenly so hard he has to shift in his seat to get comfortable. “I think I might have to cuff you to my bed and get you to call me Detective Winchester again in that exact tone of voice.”

Sam looks a little startled, then a dark flush starts to creep up his throat and he grins, slow and dirty. It’s definitely the best look Dean has seen on his expressive face.

 

***  
“This is…” Sam trails off as he looks around Dean’s apartment.

“Nice?” Dean quips.

“I was going to go with Spartan, actually. Did you just move in?”

“Something like that.” It’s been at least two years. He’s slightly embarrassed to realize that he actually has no idea what’s still packed away in the cardboard boxes neatly stacked in the corner. Can’t be anything important. “I don’t like clutter.”

“Clutter? This place is about as anonymous as a motel room.”

He’s never really considered his apartment from somebody else’s perspective. He supposes Spartan and anonymous are probably pretty precise descriptions. He shrugs. “Do you want a beer?”

“Okay.” Sam smiles at him and sits down on the couch.

Dean escapes into the kitchen, feeling strangely uncertain about having someone in his living space. Having people over normally consists of Henriksen and some of the boys from the precinct, beers, the game on the box and a bucket of fried chicken. He prefers not to invite casual lovers to his place in case they’re hard to get rid of the next morning.

When he steps back into the living room, Sam has picked up a photograph lying on the coffee table. He takes the beer Dean passes him and asks, “Who’s this?”

“My son.” Dean sits down next to him.

Sam nods, like he already worked that out. “He’s beautiful. A blond, brown-eyed cherub.”

“He gets his coloring from his mother. My ex-wife,” he adds, in case Sam’s wondering.

Sam nods at the additional information. “Otherwise he’s all you.” He turns to Dean, considers his features then lifts his hand to slowly trace a finger across his lips. “He has your mouth. A good thing too. The shape of these lips is a genetic inheritance that shouldn’t ever be lost.” His eyes are fixed on Dean’s mouth.

Dean grins and opens his lips to just take the tip of Sam’s finger into his mouth. He’s used to this thing that people have about his lips, although he doesn’t think they’ve ever been described as a genetic inheritance before. Cock-sucking is the descriptor he gets most. He opens his mouth and sucks Sam’s finger deeper in. Sam’s nostrils flare a little and his chest starts to rise and fall quicker. Dean guesses he’s thinking more about cock and less about genetics now. He smirks around Sam’s finger and moves his tongue in a slow circuit around the padded end.

Sam pulls his finger out of Dean’s mouth and sucks it into his own, licks his finger as if he’s tasting Dean. It’s Dean’s turn to draw in a sharp breath.

Sam doesn’t lift his eyes from Dean’s mouth as he says, “A mouth made for kissing.” He cups the back of Dean’s neck and pulls him into a kiss that reminds Dean of the first time he ever kissed another boy: fifteen and really drunk on six beers at a house party, hidden at the darkest end of an over-grown garden; the soft, lip-glossed kisses of his girlfriend at the time lost in the heat of a male mouth, the feel of a jean-clad erection against his thigh. It’s that pleasurable excitement of something newly-experienced. He’s heavy and drowning in it when Sam pulls away.

He’s glad to see that Sam looks as affected as he’s feeling. Sam’s eyes are wide, his cheeks are flushed and he’s breathing heavily as he says, “I knew it would be like this between us.”

They make it to the bedroom in a tangle of half-discarded clothes and frantic kisses.

When they’ve finally managed to shed the rest of their clothes and are lying naked together, mouths wet and open, tongues sliding against each other, Dean starts to feel this tight acorn of discomfort forming somewhere in his midriff. It grows rough knots and starts to scratch at his insides when Sam rolls on top of him. Sam’s body feels good against his, strong and heavy and hot, but the weight of him is also a little overwhelming and Dean’s feeling lost in sensations that aren’t completely pleasurable, something that makes him feel unsure and out of control.

He hooks a leg around Sam’s and flips him over onto his back so that their positions are reversed. Sam looks up at him, eyes widened in surprise. Dean grips his wrists hard, pushes them above his head, holding Sam down with the weight of his body and bites a hard kiss into his neck.

“Don’t.” It’s a quiet word whispered into his ear. Dean chooses to interpret it as a Don’t that really means Do. And more. And harder. He tightens his grip and grinds his hips into Sam’s. Sam’s erection is a searing heat against his body.

He’s not expecting it, which is probably how Sam manages to twist out of his grasp and yank his arms upwards. His chest connects with Sam’s, their grunted breaths meeting each other in the sliver of space between their mouths.

“Don’t.” Sam says again quietly against his mouth. “Next time.” He sucks Dean’s lower lip into his mouth and murmurs, “Next time you can cuff me to the bed-post, hold me down, hurt me a little if you want to, but not now.”

Dean can’t help thinking there won’t be a next time. He’ll fuck this up or something else will come along and do it for him. He doesn’t get to have anything as good as this.

Sam runs his tongue along Dean’s lip then licks his way up to his ear, sucks on the lobe and whispers, “Don’t be aggressive. I don’t want that. I want you to touch me. Let me touch you.”

Dean lifts his head, his arms quivering slightly as he leans on his elbows and looks down at Sam. “I don’t know-- I’ve forgotten--”

There’s so much silent understanding in Sam’s expression that Dean forgets to feel embarrassed by his inability to string together a sentence.

Sam gently rolls him off his body and pulls Dean into another one of those drowning kisses. He’s moving his hand down Dean’s flank in slow, shivering strokes, then wrapping a huge hand over Dean’s hip and pushing him back against the mattress. He runs a caressing touch down Dean’s thigh and pulls it open, stroking back up again to gently cup and squeeze his balls. Dean groans and Sam pushes his tongue deeper into Dean’s mouth as he takes Dean’s cock into his hand.

Dean stops pretending that he’s an equal partner in this, relaxes his body until he feels like he’s melting into the mattress, his mouth open and filled with Sam’s tongue, his legs open and Sam’s hand an exquisite slow-moving pressure on his aching flesh.

He’s really close--stuttering breath stolen by Sam’s inhalations--when Sam breaks the kiss, removes his hand and starts biting his way down Dean’s throat. He moves lower and sucks Dean’s nipple into his mouth, teeth scraping over the hardened nub. Dean arches into his mouth, vaguely aware that the sounds he can hear are coming from his own throat.

He’s so drowned in waves of warm physical pleasure that the world beyond the borders of the bed drops away into the darkness behind his closed eyes.

Sam starts a torturously slow passage down his body with his tongue, sucking painful markers into his skin, evidence of his mapping of Dean’s body that will show for days.

Finally, he moves his attention to Dean’s erection, warm breath a precursor to his hot mouth.

Dean opens his eyes to watch his cock disappear deep into Sam’s mouth. Sam’s eyes are closed, his face awash with pleasure. Dean’s had a lot of blowjobs in his life, has watched countless pairs of lips close around him, but never has he seen anyone take so much pleasure from it. He’s used to searching eyes looking up at him to gauge how good it feels for him, not someone lost in the act like they’re enjoying it more than he is. Jo always made him feel like she was making some sort of sacrifice by sucking him off, a gift that he could never be quite grateful enough for. Sam’s making these groaning sounds in his throat that reverberate pleasurably against Dean’s flesh, but it’s not done in any deliberate, practiced way.

When Sam drops his hand to squeeze the base of his dick like he’s going to come just from having Dean in his mouth, Dean loses the final threads of his control and only has time to clench Sam’s shoulder in warning before he comes into his mouth.

His orgasm is intense, short-circuiting his brain in a flash of lost time.

He opens his eyes to Sam’s face above him. His lips are curled into a sexy grin. Dean smiles back at him. “Fuck.” It’s not very articulate, but he doesn’t have anything else. Sam’s grin broadens in self-satisfaction. His eyebrows lift in a question that Dean answers by pulling him closer.

It’s been a while and his body is initially resistant to Sam’s entry, but Sam is slow and gentle and eventually he’s fully sheathed inside Dean, his breath hot and fast against Dean’s neck.

Considering how worked up Sam had appeared earlier, Dean expects it to be over quickly. Instead, Sam sets up this slow, steady, relentless pace until Dean is hard and aching again, his body covered in sweat, pleasure coiling up his spine.

Dean reaches down and starts to jerk himself off. Sam drops his head and watches him doing it, his hips moving faster. Dean comes again, moments before Sam lets out a long, shuddering groan and collapses on top of him.

Dean grunts when Sam pulls out. He rolls off Dean and both of them lie on their backs, looking up at the ceiling until their breathing evens out.

Sam turns onto his side, props himself up on an elbow and looks down at Dean. “Can I stay?” His voice is quiet.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Dean doesn’t mean to say it, but it slips out anyway, “Maybe not ever.” Hopefully it sounds like a joke, something sexual, rather than an avowal of undying love or a fucking marriage proposal or something.

The way Sam stills next to him, he guesses it didn’t sound like a joke.

His flush of embarrassment evaporates when Sam leans down and nuzzles his neck. Sam pulls the sheet up from where it’s twisted at the bottom of the bed and lies back with a contented sigh.

Sleep is a warm and welcoming friend in a way that it hasn’t been for him in a long time.

He wakes up in the pale glow of early morning with Sam’s hot breath in his ear, his hardening cock in Sam’s hand and Sam’s erection pressing against his ass.

It’s less intense this time. Quicker. More intimate. Sam is a muscular heat pressed up against his back, his voice ragged in Dean’s ear, telling him how good he feels, how much he’s wanted Dean from the moment he first saw him.

When he wakes the second time, the sun is hot and full at the window and the smell of sizzling bacon teases his nostrils.

The kitchen table is laden: fruit, thick Greek yogurt, bacon, toast, coffee. Sam is at the stove. He turns when Dean walks in and gives him this blinding smile that makes Dean feel simultaneously happy and nervous. He can’t allow himself to get used to waking up in the morning to this beautiful man making him breakfast.

“You do realize that all you have in your fridge is some very good coffee, something that might’ve once been a carrot and pizza crusts, right? What do you live on?”

Dean takes a seat at the table, dips a strawberry in the yogurt and pops it into his mouth. “Don’t you know that all cops live on takeout and doughnuts?”

“You’re a walking stereotype.” Sam puts a plate of poached eggs on the table and sits down opposite him.

“You’re not going to give me that ‘your body is a temple’ crap, are you?” Dean groans at how good a crispy piece of bacon tastes in his mouth. “Did you get this from the deli the next block over?”

Sam nods, smiling at him as he starts to fill his plate. “You get out what you put in. Living on doughnuts and whiskey leads to liver disease and flab.”

“You’re so gay.” Dean leans across the table to snag a glass of orange juice and grunts at the sudden discomfort in his ass.

Sam snorts. “And you’re not?”

Dean laughs. The smile fades from his face as he watches a hot, hungry look cross Sam’s face like he’s having flashbacks to last night. They share a silent, loaded look across the table.

Dean drops his eyes and breathes hard, trying to shake the feeling of Sam inside him so that he can concentrate on his eggs.

“Do you want to do something today?” Same tentative tone as when he asked whether he could stay the night.

“I can’t,” Dean replies, with some regret. “It’s Gabe’s birthday today. My kid,” he explains.

Sam nods. “Gabe? Interesting name.”

“Gabriel. My ex-wife has this thing about angels. Lapsed Catholics--you know how it is-- they never quite let go of it.”

Sam nods again. “What did you get him?”

“One of those retro paper-pod rockets and a glow-in-the-dark solar system for his bedroom. He’s three and likes playing at make-believe, you know? Being an astronaut is his favorite right now.”

Sam grins like he remembers exactly what it is to be three years old and desperate to become an astronaut.

They finish eating and Dean looks at the kitchen clock. “I need to get going.”

“Sure,” Sam says quickly and leaves the room before Dean can say something that might make him feel less like he’s trying to get rid of him.

As he finishes his coffee, Dean can hear Sam in the other room rummaging around for his things. Probably his jacket. He remembers ripping it off Sam’s shoulders last night and throwing it somewhere behind the couch.

Sam is shrugging into it when he walks into the room. The expensive material is creased and there’s a cobweb hanging from the back. He’s looking around for something else. He glances at Dean. “I can’t find my keys.” Dean helps him look and they eventually find them under the bed.

“Call me,” Sam says to him at the door and walks away before Dean can reply.

 

***  
Dean walks through the door of the house where he’d tried to play the suburban husband for two years with the same feeling of guilt he always experiences.

The house smells of hot dogs and is filled with balloons and the noise of very small children.

Jo is in the kitchen cutting bread rolls and gives him a cool look when he walks in. Harvelle is in jeans, leaning against the kitchen counter, a beer in hand, looking down at a kid in a Spiderman outfit with a bemused expression. He’s earnestly explaining to her about the web-shooting devices in his sleeves. She looks up at Dean and escapes the little kid with obvious relief. “Do you want a beer?” He’s about to say no, but she walks past him to the fridge and says quietly, “Believe me. You’re going to need it.”

Dean grins. Ellen Harvelle--toughest woman he’s ever met--looking intimidated by a snot-nosed superhero. “You’re okay,” he says quietly. “Spiderman’s one of the good guys.”

She mock-glares at him. “There are no good guys when they’re under the age of thirty.” Dean snorts with laughter and she smiles back at him. “Behave yourself today, Winchester,” she warns quietly as she passes him the cold beer.

“I have every intention of being a very good boy today,” he replies in his best good boy voice.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re your father’s son. You’ll never be a good boy.”

“You know you like your men bad, Captain.”

“Flirting with my mother, Dean?” Jo’s voice is tight as she pushes between them to get to the fridge.

“Oh, for god’s sake, Joanna,” Ellen hisses. There’s clearly some previous tension between them, probably as a result of one of their frequent arguments.

“No, of course not,” Dean replies in an even voice, adamant not to get into a confrontation with her today.

Jo seems to want the same thing. “Just kidding,” she says in a voice devoid of any humor. She briefly kisses Dean’s cheek and they go through the usual polite exchange of forced pleasantries.

He’s relieved when he can eventually escape the kitchen and the heavy history he shares with the Harvelle women.

Henriksen is at the barbeque, his daughter tucked into his hip. Dean smiles and raises his beer at him. Henriksen lifts his own beer and nods in the direction of an inflatable castle behind him.

Gabe is sitting on the grass next to the castle. He’s dismantling a toy truck, his brow furrowed in concentration. Dean feels a clench in his chest. His son is aptly named. He’s beautiful and angelic and terrifying. Dean doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible feelings Gabe evokes inside him.

Gabe lifts his head and his face lights up in simple, innocent happiness to see him. It’s an expression that Dean can never quite get used to. He grins back at him and drops to the lawn to blow wet kisses into his son’s neck and belly. He smells clean and sweet like strawberries, and shrieks with delight.

The day goes by without a hitch. Henriksen doesn’t set the barbeque on fire, like he usually does. They play cops and robbers, and Dean’s team of mini-robbers totally kick Henriksen’s mini-cops’ little asses. Jo is polite and her new man doesn’t piss Dean off even a little, even though he’s a corporate dick. Dean doesn’t drink more than the one beer and Gabe loves his rocket better than all his other presents.

It’s quite unthinkable really, and Dean’s still feeling surprised by it when he gets back to his apartment.

He gets out the bourbon to celebrate. He sits on the couch swirling the amber in the glass, thinking that maybe he’s ready to lay his father to rest, really lay him to rest in the way that the shrink says it, her serious eyes looking at him over horn-rimmed glasses.

He places the glass, untouched, on the table and picks up his phone. He scrolls through to Sam’s number, stares at it for a minute, puts the phone back on the table, picks up the glass, puts the glass back down again as he picks up his phone a second time.

“Fuck!” He throws the phone on the couch next to him and downs the bourbon in one swallow.

He stares at the opposite wall, then at the remote on the top of the TV, then at his phone next to him.

“What are you doing?”

“Hello, Dean. I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

“Don’t be a wise-ass. It just took me ten minutes to muster the balls to call you.”

Sam’s quiet for a moment. “I’m making wild mushroom risotto.”

Dean snorts. “You doing a steak to go with it?”

“Do we have to do this conversation again about how gay I am? Do you want to come over so that I can remind you how gay you are too?”

There’s another silence.

“Are you going to cook me a steak to go with the risotto?”

“No. But I’ll blow you in the kitchen while we wait for the risotto to cook.”

Another silence.

“Where do you live?”

“I thought you would’ve looked me up, known my social security number already, Detective.”

“I try not to do that anymore with people I like. My partner says it’s not conducive to healthy relationships.”

“Your partner sounds like a wise man.”

“I’ll never, ever tell him you said that.”

 

***  
Sam has a swanky address--complete with fawning doorman and elegant foyer--but his apartment is warm, lived-in, filled with color and stuff that looks as if it’s actually been chosen in exotic markets, rather than bought from some upmarket ethno place turning a blind eye to sweat-shop labor.

“This is…nice,” Dean says, looking around.

Sam smiles at him. “Most of it comes from Ginnie’s many travels. She’s always taken her gifting god-motherly duties very seriously. Most kids get computer games or something for their tenth birthday. Ginnie brought me back some animal masks from Guatemala that gave me nightmares until my dad put them in the attic. Did Gabe like his presents?”

“Yeah. Blew the wannabe step-dad’s flashy present out of the water.”

Sam grins. “You’re so competitive. We should go one-on-one at the hoop across the street. You need to learn a little humility.”

“Nah,” Dean turns to look at a vibrantly colored wall-hanging, “Don’t want to compete with you.”

Sam is quiet behind him.

Dean turns to smirk at him. “I’d only kick your ass and you’d be embarrassed, what with me beating you at your own game and all.”

“Bring it on, Winchester.”

“You just want to get hot and sweaty with me, try to push me around.”

They look at each other, grinning, both of them imagining how good it will be when they get around to that particular game.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” Before Dean can make some stupid comment, Sam raises a hand, “Stop, don’t say it. Your taste-buds will thank me. Seriously.”

Dean’s taste-buds are grateful. It’s not exactly Jim Beam, but he can’t deny that the smooth, oak-woody white wine tastes delicious. He makes a happy sound in his throat.

Sam’s looking at his mouth. “Are you always this sensual about everything?”

“I’m all about cheeseburgers and…” he lifts the bottle of wine and looks at the label, “expensive Chardonnays.”

Sam grins at him. “I’m going to have so much fun introducing you to things that taste good. Come into the kitchen.”

Of course, with a remark like that, Dean has to blow Sam in the kitchen, pushed up against the counter, his pants around his ankles and the risotto forgotten.

 

***  
There are no men of conscience left, nobody to show the way. Disappointment sits like lead in his stomach as he watches the lights go out in the apartment on the third floor.

He thrums his fingers on the steering wheel, smacks his palm hard against it. Liars and fornicators who wear the face of justice. He’d thought that this one was about something else. A man who took the law into his own hands, someone who saw the path shining before him, who knew what had to be done. A man without a father, alone in the world and in need of a brother. Instead, he’s like all the others. Soiled with the filth around him.

He knows what needs doing.

 

***  
Monday morning Dean walks into the precinct, hangover-free and feeling better about his miserable little existence than he has for a long time.

“Are you whistling?” Henriksen looks up at him from his desk like Dean just walked into their office-space in his boxers.

Dean un-puckers his lips. “Of course not.”

He ignores Henriksen’s speculative expression and sits down at his desk, starting on the case cross-referencing that takes up most of his time. He sighs, remembering the naïve, romantic ideas about detective work that he’d had before he started this job.

Just before lunch, excitement starts to stir in his gut, along with hunger pangs. “Henriksen, check this out!”

Henriksen swivels around and scoots his wheeled office chair over to look at Dean’s computer screen.

“There are at least another five cases in VICAP similar to Rose’s and the other two girls. They go back four, maybe five years. I couldn’t put it together at first. The victims are different: age, gender, race, lifestyle. But all of them had something--I think they’re religious symbols-- carved into their foreheads. All of them had been tortured. These three were found with confessions near the body. It’s a list of sins, lots of religious language in the wording. With these two latest reports, the PM lists paper in the stomach contents. He’s making them swallow the confessions. This is our guy’s MO. He’s choosing victims based on some screwed-up idea that they need to pay for their sins.”

“Shit,” Henriksen hisses next to him, eyes wide. “He’s a bona-fide--”

“Don’t say it!” Dean cuts him off, peering around suspiciously like a reporter might be lurking behind a filing cabinet.

“Well, you know who we’re looking for then?” Henriksen’s voice is loaded with cynicism.

Dean sighs. “Yeah. Single white male; 25-45 years old; lives alone; has issues with his mother; pets had a habit of disappearing around him when he was a kid; neighbors believe he’s the shy, quiet, hard-working type. And at night he masturbates over dead bodies and eats babies.” He gets up and stretches out the kinks in his spine. “We need to go to Harvelle with this.”

“Wait a minute. Have you looked further into this guy who phoned the morgue?”

Dean tries to look nonchalant. “No. Why?”

Henriksen wheels back to his own desk and picks out a file. “Sam Campbell was a suspect in a woman’s murder last year. They couldn’t prove anything, but the detective’s report points in his direction. Campbell used to work with the victim--a woman called Lily Stevenson--at another shelter. The body was found in pieces over at Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.” Henriksen snorts. “A worker was surprised to see a human leg hanging out of the front of his loader and called the cops. The lead detective is a guy called Walker. Do you want to give him a call? I’m going to do a quick lunch run. I’m starving. I suppose you’ll have your usual heart-attack on a bun?”

Dean feels like his blood has turned to ice. “Yeah. Whatever. Give me that report.” Henriksen hands it over, seemingly oblivious to the tension that radiates from Dean. He walks out grumbling about having to pay for lunch yet again.

Once Henriksen has left, Dean calls Walker. The guy is intense, even over the phone. He sounds like one of those cops who are wound so tight they’re set on a hair-trigger of violence. The kind of cop that ends up suspended after one too many charges of excessive physical force…or worse.

Dean knows how to talk to cops like Walker. They bemoan liberal policies and watchdog groups that prevent them from doing their jobs properly before Dean starts to question him about the Lily Stevenson case.

“Sam Campbell is a rich, privileged fag who thinks he can get away with murder by hiding behind his overpaid lawyers. That guy knew things about the way Lily Stevenson died that nobody but her killer could’ve known. He came in pretending to be distraught about her death, promising to help with the investigation. In fact, he reported her missing in the first place. He was trying to play me. You know how it is with these guys. They think they’re so much smarter than we are. They’re like those cocksuckers who wait around at their crime scenes because they get off on watching us chase our tails. Soon as I started picking holes in his story, he brings in these high-powered lawyers and some fucken lunatic aunt or someone who lays into me, in front of everyone at the front desk, about discrimination and constitutional rights.”

“Did he have an alibi?”

“Yeah. Some kids who hero-worshipped the guy said he’d been working at the shelter the night the vic disappeared. Far as I’m concerned, the guy still had opportunity. There wasn’t enough evidence, and in the end my captain pulled me off it.” Dean can hear someone in the background talking to Walker. “Oh, fuck off, Kubrick,” Walker says. “Sorry,” he apologizes to Dean. “My partner thinks Campbell is psychic, like that explains how he knew what happened to the vic. Psychics! They brought in some mad old bat the other day who claims to talk to the dead to assist with a case. Can you believe that?”

Dean makes all the right noises, his thoughts in turmoil, something twisting uncomfortably in his gut. He sits staring at the phone after he’s put it down. Eventually, he makes his mind up and leaves a note for Henriksen, saying that he’s following a lead and asking him not to go to Harvelle until he gets back.

 

***  
Sam is sitting at the desk at the back of the bookshop. He looks up and his face breaks into that blindingly beautiful grin. It fades pretty quickly as Dean crosses the room. Sam gets up, the desk a barricade between them, and draws a deep breath like he knows what’s coming.

“Lily Stevenson.”

Sam nods. He looks pale and resigned. He goes over to the only customer in the bookshop, ushers her out, flips around the OPEN sign and walks back to Dean. He stops a couple of feet away from him and stands there, just looking at him, waiting.

“You want to tell me how you knew that two women had been murdered before their bodies were discovered? Don’t lie. Don’t give me some bullshit about gut instinct. Tell me the truth.”

“The first time it happened I was twelve years old--”

“Sam, do not try to play me, man. Do you even realize how much shit you’re in?”

Sam ignores the interruption. “I was twelve years old and I’d stayed after school for book club. Mr Wyatt was over at the door saying goodbye to everyone. I’d had this dull ache at the base of my skull all afternoon and as I started walking over to the door, this pain exploded through my head. It’s like the most excruciating migraine you can imagine, like a hand grenade going off at the base of your skull. I stopped, thought I was going to puke. Mr Wyatt was talking to me and I could see his mouth moving but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. All I could hear was this rushing sound in my ears like wind or water. As I looked at Mr Wyatt, his head started to crumple inwards--”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It was like watching a soda-can being crushed; his skull crumpled like a giant hand was squeezing it. I knew it wasn’t real because when I blinked I could see that he was just standing there, looking really worried and trying to talk to me, but then I’d blink again and his face would change into this crushed, bloody mess. I started screaming and then I passed out. My dad was waiting for me out in the parking lot. Somebody went out to get him and he took me to the emergency room. By the time we got there, I’d come out of it. The doctor gave me a clean bill of health and gave my dad a number for a child psychologist. The next day I went into school and everybody was talking about how Mr Wyatt had been killed in an accident on the way home. He rode a bike and didn’t stand a chance when he was hit by a semi.”

It starts with the short hairs at the back of Dean’s neck, spreads over his body like some static force until all the hair on his body is standing up. “What the fuck are you saying, Sam?”

Sam’s skin is pale, almost jaundiced under his tan, his face an unreadable mask. “The night Lily died I’d already had the headache for two days. I knew something was coming, but I didn’t know who it was coming for. Lily was my friend. She volunteered with me at another shelter before I started at The Refuge. I couldn’t stay there, not after the investigation, not after what that cop tried to do to me.”

There’s a hitch in that expressionless voice before he continues in a monotone, “Lily hadn’t turned up for her shift. They’d been trying to call her all day when I arrived for the sleep-in. There was a board of staff photographs as you walked in. I saw her picture like it was a morgue photograph on the news and had a vision right there in the foyer: flashes of images, sensations of pain and fear. I threw up all over the floor. It’s more intense the closer I am to the person. They’re death omens. It’s only ever about violent, unnatural deaths. Ginnie says it’s because I’m born to be a protector, a seer. She says that in some cultures I’d be a shaman, a magic man. That’s what she called me when she came to get me after I watched my dad die. Magic man. Ginnie is a hopeless hippie romantic. It’s a curse. I can’t protect or warn anyone. I can only watch it as it happens. Do you believe me?”

Dean looks at him, considers the shift that will occur in his world if he admits to Sam what he believes, tectonic plates realigning into a world that he doesn’t think he could live in. “I can’t believe you. I’m a cop. I believe in evidence, in alibis, in forensics, in cause and effect. This is---” He runs a hand angrily through his hair. “I don’t know what this is.”

Sam looks pained but unsurprised. “I do have an alibi for the night Rose died. Jake--”

“Jake is an eighteen year old kid halfway in love with you. I’ve been on the receiving end of how persuasive you can be. How do I know what you did to get that alibi from him?” He can’t help it; he’s angry and afraid. He expects Sam to lose his temper, hopes for it so that this can end quick and dirty. Instead, Sam flinches like Dean just hit him. Sam’s face carries hurt in the way that it does every other emotion, unexpected and open.

Regret is a rush of bad feeling in his gut. “Fuck, Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m a dick.”

“You need to leave. You can contact me through my lawyer.”

Dean is seriously starting to hate the way Sam is able to shut down his face into that cool, closed expression. He wants to say something but can’t find the right words.

They both know that the next time they meet will be in an interview room at the precinct.

 

***  
When it comes down to it two days later, Dean chickens out and allows another detective that Harvelle’s assigned to the case to question Sam with Henriksen.

He returns to the precinct, sick with apprehension. “And?” he asks Henriksen when he walks in.

Henriksen gives him a throwaway glance over his shoulder. “Dead end. He’s not our guy. He has watertight alibis for all the murders.” He turns around in his chair. “I don’t know what the hell you did to him, though. The only time the guy even showed any emotion was when your name came up. What did you say to him when you questioned him?”

“You know me, partner, my interrogation technique always gets results.”

Henriksen grins. “Did you play bad cop with him?”

Dean gives him a tight smile and regrets his expression almost immediately as he watches Henriksen’s radar pick it up.

“Fuck, Dean, you didn’t. Did you?”

Dean turns away. This connection between him and Henriksen--intermittently broken as it’s been recently--is useful as hell for the job but irritating in the extreme when it comes to personal stuff. “Don’t start on me, Vic.”

“Jesus, Dean, he was a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“Was being the operative word. I knew he had nothing to do with it from the start.” Dean sits down at his desk and thunks his head down onto it a couple of times.

When he looks up, Henriksen is giving him his earnest, grandfatherly expression. “Is he the reason you were whistling on Monday?”

“Fuck off, Henriksen,” he says tiredly, resting his forehead back on the desk, face hidden in his arms.

He doesn’t lift his head when Henriksen speaks again. He sounds serious and Dean isn’t sure he wants to hear what his partner has to say.

It’s not quite what he’s expecting.

“Dean, you know I love you, man. Besides my wife and daughter, you are the only other person on the planet that carries around a chunk of my heart with you, but honestly, you have been a complete dick since your dad died. You were always a reckless son-of-a-bitch but lately you’ve been impossible. You need to get it together. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. Let him go. It’s time, Dean.”

Dean turns his head, looking at Henriksen sideways. “I know,” he says quietly. “I know,” he says it again. “This guy, Sam Campbell, it was about something else. Maybe something serious.” He’s mumbling into his bicep and bites himself in some kind of punishment.

Henriksen waits him out silently. Eventually, Dean lifts his head and grins at him, a wicked glint in his eye, “I love you too, Partner.” He gets up and stands in front of Henriksen, crotch in his face. “So, you going to show me how much you love me?”

Henriksen looks up at him, shaking his head. “Deflection and denial: Dean Winchester’s middle names. And you are not ready for the Henriksen lovin’, little man, so you can get that thing out of my face.” He emphasizes the word, giving Dean’s crotch a dismissive look, one eyebrow raised.

Dean leans down and smacks a wet kiss on his forehead. “You’re the one living in denial, Partner.”

 

***  
It’s Friday and the weather has turned murky, low-hanging clouds a premonition of the storm to come.

It’s been a long week. The case doesn’t appear to be going anywhere except in maze-like circles. The emptiness of his apartment has started to irritate him like an abrasive skin-itch. His phone is a mocking presence that he tries to ignore. He goes for long runs. Pisses everyone off at the gym by sparring too aggressively. Buys a plant for his kitchen windowsill, a potted cactus that he calls Fred. He can’t sleep, and when he does, his dreams are haunted by case-file photographs, his father’s voice and Sam’s smile.

When it finally comes, it’s unexpected and catches him unaware. His head’s somewhere else.

He gets the call at his desk after Henriksen had been called away earlier: his wife is ill at home.

Dean’s call is from a foreman at a building site. The front desk puts it through when he describes a black SUV with a guy in a baseball cap across the street from the site looking like he’s casing the place. The foreman’s scared and stuttering-nervous over the phone after all the sensationalized media coverage the case has received--despite Harvelle’s best television lipstick and assurances--and insists that someone comes out immediately.

Nobody else is available to go with him so Dean decides to check it out himself. He drives around the block a couple of times and sees the foreman, in a fluorescent work-jacket and hard hat, standing in the middle of the empty worksite. He pulls up and gets out of the car. The guy waves at him and starts to cross the site. Dean heads towards him. The ground is muddy and his shoe gets caught in a slushy pot-hole. He’s cursing and shaking it free when the dart hits him in the shoulder.

He has a moment to consider his own stupidity before the world starts to wobble and goes black.

Consciousness is a slow slide into awareness: pain pulses down his left side, wet and muddy clothing sticks to his skin, rain beats down on the corrugated metal roofing above him. He’s tied to a chair, plastic cable ties biting into the skin of his wrists and ankles. He jerks his body, pulling against the restraints.

“You’re not going anywhere, Detective Winchester.” It’s the guy from the bar. He knew it would be. Walker was right about one thing, these freaks like to get in on the action, to see their handiwork up close. He squats in front of Dean, holds his gaze with those crazy pale eyes. “We have a long afternoon ahead of us. You might as well relax.”

Dean blinks away the muddy rainwater sticking his eyelashes together and tries to keep his tone steady and even. “You have the advantage over me. You know who I am. Who are you?”

The guy sniggers, his lip curling in a way that reminds Dean of a dog with the early signs of rabies. “You’re right about that, Detective. I do have the advantage over you. You’re not used to being in this position, are you? You have quite the reputation when it comes to getting confessions out of criminals. Now it’s you who must face up to your crimes.” The guy huffs a low laugh. He settles back on his haunches in front of Dean, his hands hot and uncomfortable on Dean’s knees.

It takes all of Dean’s self-control to not jerk away, to not spit in his face. Don’t antagonize him. A clear head is the only way you’re going to get out of this alive. Don’t be an asshole, Dean.

“It’s going to be difficult to have a proper conversation here, Blue Eyes, if I don’t know your name.” The bravado comes easy. It’s his knee-jerk reaction to the cold fear that invades his chest. He’s never seen eyes so flat and dead, like blue marbles unnaturally shoved into a human skull.

Hot hands tighten on his knees. “I am John, Dean. I am the voice of one who calls in the wilderness: prepare you the way and make straight in the desert a highway.”

He has a name, that’s good. Negotiation is about establishing a personal relationship, a connection. “I understand what you’re doing, John.”

John cocks his head, a knowing smile creeping around the corners of his mouth. “Do you, Dean Winchester? What is it exactly that you understand?”

“I understand that you’re tired of the evil that surrounds you. This city is full of it. I see it every day.” Establish the personal connection. “We’re more alike than you know, John.”

John huffs that strange, breathy laugh again and reaches up to gently wipe away the mud on Dean’s cheek. Dean clenches all the muscles in his body to hide his shudder.

“Don’t get me wrong, Dean. I have some respect for you. I know what it’s like to be misunderstood, to be maligned in the public eye. When you killed Azazel--a man the whole city knew to be a trafficker in human beings, in drugs and guns--what did they do? Did they thank you for finally ridding the city of a scourge that had plagued them for years? No? Of course, they didn’t. Instead, your integrity, your reputation was questioned in the tabloids and your department suspended you while you were being investigated.”

“It’s protocol,” Dean says shortly. “And it was only for two days. I was a hero in the press after I’d been cleared.”

“Yes, a hero. Is that what you are?” Dean clenches his jaw and John’s smirk turns knowing, a feral show of teeth. “One of the papers did an in-depth piece on you. The reporter was very thorough, cited an Internal Affairs investigation into your…methods a couple of years ago. Your father had a similar reputation. Mavericks was the word used in the report, I think. Am I right?”

Dean shifts uncomfortably against the restraints. It’s unsettling to think of this guy probing into his background. “Sometimes we have to use unconventional methods to achieve a just outcome, John. You understand that, don’t you?”

More huffed laughter. “Yes, Dean. We do. We do indeed. I had a feeling you and I would have much in common. I felt a connection with you immediately and thought perhaps that I was being led to you for reasons that were different to why I’m normally drawn to others. Unfortunately, you’re not all you appear to be, are you, Detective? And I am still weak, foolish, blind. A poor disciple.”

“I’m an open book, John.” He knows his smile probably comes across more as a grimace.

“No, you’re not, Dean. But you will be.” Dean doesn’t shiver at the menace in his voice, doesn’t try to crane his neck to watch John walk behind him. He hears the quick slide of a zip. When John steps back in front of him, he has something in his hand. It’s a razorblade inserted into the end of a plastic grip, something custom-made. Dean’s heart clenches, starts thudding quick and hard in his chest.

“We’re going to play a game, Dean. You’re going to tell me the truth or I’m going to hurt you. I won’t lie to you, it hurts a lot.” He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal the scars that criss-cross his arms, some of them are pale with age, others are pink and new. “Pain is the only path to truth.”

Rage slams through Dean and rips away the mask he’s been wearing to play games with this lunatic. He wrenches against the restraints, spits in the guy’s face as he hisses, “Fuck you, you crazy son-of-a-bitch!”

John calmly wipes his face and grins down at Dean. “See, there it is, the real you. And we’ve only just gotten started.”

He hits Dean open-handed across the side of the head. Pain explodes in Dean’s ear, leaving him deaf. Blood fills his mouth and slides down his throat. He coughs and spits, vaguely aware of his right sleeve being ripped open. The first slice of the blade into his skin sends excruciating pain burning up his nerve endings. He swallows the scream in his throat, tastes metal and sick, holds it down.

When he opens his eyes, John has wheeled a dilapidated office chair in front of him and is considering him with his head cocked to the side as if Dean’s an interesting experiment. “When you shot Azazel, did you intend to do it? Did you choose to kill him? Were you acting out of vengeance or was it really in self-defense?”

“Fuck you.”

His whole body convulses when the blade slices into him the second time.

“Self-defense or vengeance, Dean?”

Dean’s vision narrows into the mouth, the question, a tunnel of white blocking out everything else. He sees Azazel at the end of his gun, the moment before he squeezes the trigger frozen in time. The split-second decision to go for the head shot, rather than the shoulder, because he couldn’t be sure, his training kicking in as he lifted his arm fractionally. Not about vengeance, not even about any conscious defense of his own life, just training, something built in.

“Fuck you.” His voice sounds like somebody else’s.

Two cuts this time, the second deeper than the first, slipping through some fragile thread, the pull on his heart as it tries to stabilize the blood flow around his body. “It’s just a matter of time, Dean.” A hiss in his ear. “Let’s start again, shall we? Let’s get to the root of your sin rather than dance around your conflicted desire to pretend like your job is about exacting true justice.” Another hard smack to the side of his face, slashing blade through the shirt of his other arm. “Did you leave your wife and child because you wanted to bugger other men?”

Dean laughs, can hear the way it chokes in his throat. He’s in trouble. It’s a slow, sliding thought, grey hovering at the edges, pulling at his legs like a weight dragging him down into murky, watery depths. He’d loved her or thought he’d loved her. Strong and sassy and the way the light used to catch her hair sometimes.

His Fuck you is perfunctory, it’s not like he hasn’t been practicing it his whole life: Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Hard slap in the face pulls him out of it.

He doesn’t want to die looking into the cold, pale blue of madness, and prays in the hope that some kindly god is listening out there. He knows that this son-of-a-bitch has no claim to any divine power anywhere.

“You deserve to die, Dean. Say it. You’re weak and sinful. Nobody cares about you. You’re alone. Let me hear your confession. Let go.”

Fast silver glint of the blade high up into his armpit.

No. No. Yes. It’s true. He deserves to die. He’s been looking for it for a long time. His son will grow up into someone who wants to know how things work - he has that way of thinking already. Henriksen will be furious. Being with Sam is like swimming underwater in a warm, slow-moving current.

Slow fade into the grey so that he barely registers the smell of the tear-gas, grasping hands, jostling white of the ambulance, the wheeling of the gurney.

 

***  
“You’re the stupidest motherfucker in the history of stupid motherfuckers.”

Dean swallows the hoarse dryness in his throat as he works out where he is. “I’ve died and heaven is filled with singing choirs of Henriksen angels.”

“As soon as you recover, I am going to kick your ass, Dean, I swear to god.”

Dean hurts all over, skin split open and itchily trying to heal itself. Only his right hand feels warm, cocooned and safe. He looks down. “Are you holding my hand, partner?”

Henriksen doesn’t let go of his hand. Dean squeezes his fingers and asks, “How did you know?”

“That crazy boyfriend of yours came storming into the precinct. Even Harvelle was intimidated. It took us a while to find you. The guy had dragged you through an alley half a block away from the work site into an abandoned warehouse. Campbell wasn’t too clear on the specifics. And not only do I have to save your ass from an insane serial killer, I also had to give you my blood.”

Him and Henriksen are the same blood type--it figures.

“So, Campbell, huh?” Henriksen drops his eyes as he moves his hand to fiddle with the bed cover. Dean watches his fingers unconsciously twisting the fabric into little bunches. “Turns out he’s not some psychotic murderer, just your average, garden-variety psychic with death visions.” He looks back at Dean. “That might come in handy with a reckless son-of-bitch like you who’s always trying to get himself killed.”

Dean meets his gaze. “You know me, Vic. I don’t like to do anything the easy way.”

Henriksen snorts. “You do know how to pick them. I thought marrying Harvelle’s only daughter was a sign of how crazy you are, but this guy brings some seriously complicated baggage with him.”

Dean nods at the truth of that statement, his chest tightening a little at the concern in Henriksen’s voice. He grins and says, “He makes a really good breakfast, though.”

Henriksen grins back at him. “You’re a greedy fucker, Winchester. Naturally the way to your heart is through your stomach.”

“Talking of food,” Dean says, even though that’s not what they’re talking about at all, “Can you get me a burger? I’m starving and I don’t think I could deal with boiled hospital food and green Jell-O.”

Henriksen grumbles about having to spend his measly cop’s salary on constantly feeding Dean but goes out to get him a burger anyway. The next day he brings double bacon and cheese burgers and beer shakes of Sam Adams and vanilla ice-cream from Dean’s favorite burger joint.

Dean’s suspicion that Henriksen secretly enjoys the beer shake--despite his constant assertions to the contrary--is finally confirmed.

They eat together, snorting with laughter as they watch Harvelle on the room’s small TV screen praising them as examples of New York’s finest and commending their tireless work in bringing a serial-killer to justice. Dean does the sub-titles, voicing her true thoughts. Henriksen cuts in frequently and monologues his own personal mayoral commendation, calls Dean a pussy a lot as he tops up their shakes from a stash of beer he has under the bed. It’s like old times.

The nurses are unimpressed and eventually kick Henriksen out.

Later, Jo brings Gabe to see him. He pulls out Dean’s drip and presses every switch and button within reaching distance. Dean watches him and wonders if his son will grow up to become doctor. The kid will have an uphill battle with his mother if he ever chooses to become a cop. Jo shows some genuine concern over his injuries and is clearly relieved that he didn’t manage to get himself killed, but that familiar accusation is there the whole time in her voice, that slightly shrill undertone that Dean remembers so very well. He’s grateful for the concern and tries to be understanding about where the angry accusation comes from. It’s not like he doesn’t understand what it’s like to resent a life that’s taken your family away from you. He lost his father to it. Maybe he’s also lost part of himself along the way. Jo lost her father, a lot of her mother, and he knows that she blames the job for the train-wreck of their marriage. He hopes that Gabe will grow up into someone who wants to be a doctor or a lawyer.

When he looks at Gabe and sees his father’s eyes looking back at him, Dean knows that it’s a false hope. Gabe is a Winchester.

He ends up spending two nights in the hospital, tries to check himself out earlier but discovers that it doesn’t work like that and that nurses are kind of scary.

Sam doesn’t call or come and see him.

 

***  
It’s Tuesday evening and the sky is filled with pink, slowly dying red and the pin-prick twinkle of newly born stars.

When he pulls up outside of Sam’s apartment block, he can see him at the hoop across the street, shirtless and in sweats. Dean takes a moment to appreciate the symmetry and beauty of the male form before he takes a deep breath and prepares to have his ass kicked.

Sam turns to watch him as he crosses the court, effortlessly bouncing the ball with one hand at his side, a challenge written into his quietly waiting stance. As he walks towards him, Dean strips off his shirt and throws it to the side. Sam’s hot, steady gaze drops from his face to run over his injuries. There’s a flicker of emotion across his face that Dean can’t quite categorize.

Sam’s sympathy--if that’s what it is--lasts for exactly the moment that it takes for Dean to steal the ball from him.

After that it’s hot and sweaty and competitive.

Dean’s lungs are burning, he’s probably lost a couple of stitches and doesn’t have a hope in hell of evening the score when he gives up, leaning over with his hands on his knees, gulping air. “I’m wounded, man. Give me a break!”

He looks up to see Sam smirking at him.

Sam spins the ball on his finger before replying, “That’s why I was going easy on you.” He walks over, tucks his hand under Dean’s chin and pulls him up into a kiss. Sam’s lips taste like unnameable promises, but Dean’s mouth is too parched to appreciate them and he’s still trying to suck air into his lungs.

Sam gives up on the kiss--he’s barely out of breath, the bastard--and lowers his head to taste the sweat on Dean’s neck instead. He lifts his head, licking the taste of Dean off his lips and gives him a look like he’s known him forever and understands him better than Dean could ever know himself. “C’mon,” he says quietly. “I have beer. I’ll make you dinner.”

Dean is still trying to catch his breath--can barely speak--and settles for a caveman grunt of pleasurable anticipation.

They head across the street and Sam says, “You’ll have to meet Ginnie.”

“Should I be afraid?” Dean thinks that he might be.

Sam grins. “Nah, she’s safe enough. Tiger’s become kind of feral, though. Especially since he’s had kittens.”

Dean guesses he can deal with that. Feral cats, crazy god-mothers, death visions and basketball. Everyone brings baggage with them, right?

He ignores the way his inner voice starts a wry, airport-intercom listing of the Dean Winchester baggage claim.

It takes dinner, four beers and that drowning in the warm-water world of Sam’s body for him to really express his acceptance and gratitude in the quiet dark. He counters it with sharp bites into Sam’s shivering skin and laughingly whispers in his ear that between Sam and Jennifer Love Hewitt? Sam's definitely the hotter psychic.

Sam reaches under the bed and before Dean knows what’s happening, he’s cuffed to the bedpost, and Sam's making him pay for it.

Dean could definitely take him, but since the guy saved his life and all that, he allows it.

(And so Detective!Dean and his homme fatal, Psychic!Sam, live (kind of) happily ever after. Because sometimes a really good detective deserves a happy ending).


End file.
